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69dias · 2 years

Text

baby don’t go (i’m bad at being alone)

genre: bff2l, idiots to lovers

warnings: as slowburn as it gets for 25k words, jk is an idiot and oc is so mean to herself AND to others occasionally. religious themes [Bible verses], mentions of alcoholism, unrequited love (not between jk and oc), mentions and themes of death, resolving trauma, bad childhoods. smut: vaginal fingering, marking kink, ily kink, kinda breeding kink, unprotected sex which is BAD

wc: 25k (this is hefty IM SAWRY)

listen to a playlist for this here!

When Jungkook was seven years old, his mother had asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up. He'd answered, way too confident and much too quickly, that his ultimate passion in life was to be a ninja. His mother had laughed fondly, serving him a plate of fruit that she’d cut up for him, and ruffled his hair

He’s positive that she had convinced herself that he'd figure it out eventually; that she’d probably taken it in stride considering the fact that he was seven, but the memory remains clear as day in Jungkook's head in his senior year of college.

Computer Science. That had turned out to be his actual ‘ultimate passion’ in life, though Jungkook always finds himself hesitating when he says it out loud. Perhaps his younger self had thought that he would figure it out eventually too, shoving the concept of a future deep into his mind until he was nearing the end of his gap year and had to choose something tangible to study, and perhaps he’d made the right decision considering his knack for coding and the outrageous starting salary for his major, but his voice always waivers when someone asks what he’s studying.

After all, Jungkook is nothing like you.

Enter character: his childhood best friend, whose umbilical cord had only freshly been cut when they met, much too young to comprehend what he was even looking at. You were a year younger than him, but always a few grades ahead, thanks to your insane amount of academic aptitude (that came with the burden of being afraid to fail at all, but only Jungkook truly knows that), and you’d always, always, known what you wanted to be when you grew up.

You’d answer, voice too strong and vocabulary too poise for an elementary school kid; “My passion is to study law, like my mother.”

You stayed true to it, as well, and if Jungkook wasn’t too absorbed in being impressed by you, he would’ve been sad that you never had a true, silly dream — a princess, or a ballerina, or an astronaut, or anything that didn’t require you to be so stringent at such a young age. But you’d skipped 3rd grade, skipped senior year, went straight to Columbia, and then to Columbia Law; by the time you had graduated college, Jungkook was about halfway done with his gap year. Simply put, being impressed by you wasn’t difficult.

But back to the point he was making, Jungkook is nothing like you, but he misses seeing your face at the frequency he did when you lived next door. And he misses getting you your ridiculously overpriced iced white mochas from a very specific New York-based small business. And he misses you.

The thought of you makes the aforementioned memory with his mother run through his head a bit more persistently than usual, and it’s hard to ignore on an otherwise quiet Wednesday morning. That is, however, until his roommate pops his head into the bathroom.

Enter character: Jungkook’s roomie, Kim Mingyu. Ripped, tall, extremely attractive, and at any given point, either drunk off his ass, or high off his ass, or hungover as shit.

Today, it’s the latter, if the exhausted lily in his voice is any indication.

“Hey, JK.”

He blinks, and the man in question nods from the edge of the bathtub.

“How the hell do I kick this girl out.”

Jungkook’s toothpaste drips onto his wrist, and leans across the commode to spit it out.

“I don’t know, man. Ask her to leave, and give her breakfast money.”

He is not speaking from experience, but Mingyu nods as though he’s been given profound philosophical advice. Jungkook turns the tap on, and wonders how much his friend has had to drink when he visibly grimaces at the rush of the water.

“Thanks man. See you around.”

We live together, I’ll see you in literally one minute.

Jungkook nods, and lets Mingyu shut the door before he’s rinsing his mouth and tending to the very strict AM skincare regime he’s curated. The memory he was stuck on has taken another path to the back of his brain, and he’s thankful that he doesn’t have to think of it, think of you, or think of how much he misses his mother any longer.

He doesn’t, however, exit the bathroom immediately. The girl Mingyu had over is causing a ruckus in their living room, demanding to know why she’s being kicked out and simultaneously letting Jungkook know that his advice was definitely not taken into account; he’d be a bit offended if he couldn’t practically hear Mingyu’s head pounding as she steadily gets louder.

He decides Comp.Sci is a good option; he’s definitely going to get paid enough to not have to deal with this roommate bullshit once he’s out of this college, but he can’t help but feel bad for the girl, and feel worse for Mingyu.

Jungkook walks out when he hears the front door finally lock, and looks up a sobriety program on his phone as his roommate walks past him to his own room.

“Hey JK?”

He turns around, sheepishly hiding his phone without considering the fact that Mingyu is definitely seeing double and definitely didn’t make out his search.

“Yeah?”

“Do not do this one-night stand thing.”

Hey Mingyu? Do not do this alcohol thing.

Both pieces of advice are a bit too little too late, considering that the two of them are in their final years and are confidently past the stage of needing such freshman-esque tips, but Jungkook chooses to stay quiet so as to not rub salt into Mingyu’s wound, though he’s positive the latter is barely aware of this metaphorical wound.

“Yeah, thanks man.”

Mingyu nods again, this time affirmatively, as though he’s given some profound Kantean counseling before shutting his door. Jungkook copies the cheapest and closest sobriety program he finds, and pastes the link in his notes app for future reference.

—

When you were 17, late in your first year of college, your boyfriend had died.

It’s a horrible note to start off on, and it’s worse to have to think about it on a Wednesday, seeing as you reserve these deep delves into trauma for long weekends and bank holidays, but the thing about grief is that it presents itself in weird ways.

Today, you remember the wake. Specifically, you remember the coffee you’d drank afterwards, and how you’ve ended up with the same drink today. It wasn’t your fault, no, a shaken espresso is a common drink at the coffee shop next to campus, and there’s no way AJ would’ve known, seeing as it’s a detail you’ve quite literally never mentioned.

Enter character: AJ, or Alex Jacob Lee, your closest friend at law school, and barista of another overpriced coffee shop you frequent, not to be mistaken with the one further into the city from where you buy those sinfully good white mochas. He has a game going on with you, where he’ll conjure up a different drink for you every Wednesday after your last class, which aligns with his shifts there.

And today, he’s chosen a shaken espresso. Again, not his fault. Again, not a bad drink. It’s the way the bitterness sits on your tongue, and the first greetings of summer in the evening air that have you thinking of your boyfriend — ex-boyfriend, that is. You think of his smile, the closed casket he was laid to rest in because his body was pretty wrecked from the car crash, and you think of Jeon Jungkook.

You remember his arms around you, and you remember refusing to cry. You remember him buying you the drink, and you remember breaking down in front of him, showing any semblance of weakness for the first time in all your 17 years of knowing each other. You think of how much you miss him, how it’s been a good few weeks since you’ve seen him in person, you think of how you never actually fell in love with your boyfriend, and how broken you’d been after he passed.

You still feel the ebbing pain in the left side of your chest, but that’s not something you’re willing to admit. After all, it’s been a good 6 years since then, and you laid him to rest in the tresses of your mind the second you had left the cemetery after his wake.

When you’re done with the drink, you’re done with the memory, and you decide to return to the shop; that way, you can convince yourself that you’re fine, and you can convince AJ to get dinner with you. The coffee lingers in your mouth, though, and take a quick detour to the vending machine to the left of the shop to pick up a bottle of water and think about how horrible the placement of this machine is.

“Hey, you. What’s wrong? Drink not good enough today?”

AJ’s right next to you when you pick up the water from the slot at the bottom, and you find yourself smiling up at him instinctively.

“I think you’ve lost your touch, honestly.”

He laughs, you laugh with him, and your heart feels just a bit lighter after the thought you’ve just had to throttle out of your brain physically, which reminds you of why you returned to the shop in the first place. He looks down at you, gaze so fixed that you look away for a moment before you even open your mouth to speak.

“Wanna grab some dinner? I’m kinda winded, we can get pizza.”

He looks back at the shop, and then at you. The silence is comfortable, and you can hear the music from within the business as someone opens the door to enter. AJ’s expression is a bit hard to read, but the little furrow of his brow, and the way he’s avoiding eye contact tells you that he’s about to say no.

“Can I take a rain check? I’ve gotta finish up at the shop, and I have an early morning tomorrow.”

I’ll wait, and we won’t take long. We can just take it out, we don’t have to sit and eat.

Your mouth feels dry, tastes little like you’ve just thrown up bile, and your eyes shake just a bit as you think of what to say, think of where to look.

“Oh, yeah? No prob, Jakey.”

The nickname slips out, and his mouth droops into a lopsided grin. You don’t notice the twinkle of his eyes, because you’re too busy unscrewing the bottle of water, eager to finally get the tinge of coffee out of your mouth.

He doesn’t say much more, just tells you that he’ll see you around, and takes a quick jog back to work. Pulling your phone out of your pocket is a bit hard because of how hard your hands are shaking, and you clench your fingers together to stop them from doing so, though you’re not sure why you’re acting like this in the first place. Maybe it’s because you’ve just remembered one of the worst days of your life, maybe it’s because you needed company, maybe it’s because you know AJ doesn’t have classes early tomorrow, and maybe it’s because you miss your old best friend.

You decide it’s the latter, and when you finally, finally unlock your phone, you decide to call Jungkook.

The phone rings, and you can’t stand to hear the way AJ’s voice travels outside the coffee shop occasionally, so you walk onto the pavement, trying to focus on the obnoxious rings of the phone. You let it go to voicemail when he doesn’t pick up, and decide that you won’t deal with rejection today, so text him to get dinner with you instead

[to JayKayz] hey, you down to get some pizza tonight?

[to JayKayz] i’ll take the train to NYU and you can meet me at 2 bros?

You figure he’s either in, or finishing his last class, hence the lack of response for the first ten minutes or so, which severely dampens your mood on the way to the train station, but he replies soon after, and you’d be lying if you said your mood didn’t do an entire 180.

[from JayKayz] this is fucking insane cuz I was literally just thinking about you this morning

[from JayKayz] yes to pizza btw.

[from JayKayz] sorry I didn’t pick up I was dealing with Mingyu who’s fucking drunk again.

[from JayKayz] text me when ur on campus and I’ll pick you up.

You have to physically fight yourself from smiling like a psychopath, which is awkward since you don’t really know why you’re smiling. Maybe it’s because he was thinking of you, maybe it’s because he said he’s, or maybe it’s because it’s funny how fed up he is with his roommate who definitely needs to attend a sobriety program. You decide it’s the latter, and your heart isn’t on edge the whole time you make your way to Jeon Jungkook’s university.

—

The thing about you and Jungkook is that there’s nothing awkward about the silences that tend to ensue between the two of you. It’s not uncommon for there to be no words spoken, especially in the past few years — Jungkook has always been an introvert, and school tends to tire you out of being able to carry the conversation. It’s okay, it’s normal, and it’s happened a lot since you moved out to be nearer to campus, but you’re different today.

Jungkook notices the shift almost as soon as you sit down across from him and slide him his coke, hands otherwise empty, saying absolutely nothing else. Typically (read: every single time the two of you eat at 2Bros Pizza, which is not rare), you make fun of him for ordering the Meat Supreme slice, and you always get a coke float for yourself, which reminds him of the time there was a new employee working the Night Shift, and you, in your drunken stupor, almost jumped the counter when he didn’t know how to make one for you. He tucks the memory aside to ask you what’s wrong:

“No float today? Finally saw the light?”

It comes out wrong, less empathetic than he’d like to be, seeing as you’re visibly struggling with something, but it seems to break you out of your own head, and you look up at him. Your eyes shine under the streetlight just a couple inches away from the table the two of you sit at, and the way a smile breaks across your face sends something akin to a shiver down his spine.

“Yeah, I had a coffee earlier. AJ and I have a game going, so - uh, yeah, I’m not that thirsty right now.l

Jungkook remembers this guy, but he also notices the way you’ve started to chew on the right side of your lip as you think about him. He hums quietly, opening his mouth to speak when you beat him to it.

“How’s Mingyu by the way? Day drinking again?”

He laughs out loud, taking a bite out of his pizza. You do the same, eyes a bit less dazed as you listen intently to whatever he’s about to say, but he doesn’t speak for a while again, and the silence that ensues this time is more comfortable than before.

It’s something about Jungkook that’s routinely, and you don’t hate it at all. You’ve been a stickler for organization, for schedules, for routine for as long as you can remember, and while you and him are quite different, you can tell that Jungkook appreciates the stability you bring.

You remember being a child and coming here with your family, Jungkook with his. Your mom would share a cheese slice with you, and his mom would share the abominable Meat Premium slice with him. You’d get a coke float, and his eyebrows would furrow as he animatedly talked about how good everything tasted, almost looking upset because it was delicious. You’d stay quiet, sharing an exasperatedly fond look with the two women who sat across from each other, and then you’d look at Jungkook.

And then, you look at Jungkook.

He has the same pinch in his eyebrows, but he’s been eating here for over a decade so the comments about how good the food is have dwindled, and he just slurps obscenely at the cheese, occasionally stopping to take an equally obscene swig of his drink. You’d be disgusted if AJ ate that way, but it’s Jungkook, so you just laugh, and the question you asked about his roommate dissipates from where it was hanging in the air.

“So this AJ guy, what’s his deal?”

You pause mid-bite, looking a bit confused; the timing is scary, and it’s almost like Jungkook's managed to read your mind in the past minute. You answer with a question of your own.

“So this Mingyu guy, what’s his deal?”

“Touché.”

“No like, actually, though,” you let out a laugh at the way Jungkook goes back to devouring his food. “He needs to get to a sobriety program.”

“Dude, for real. I was literally looking one up for him this morning, like it’s an actual fucking problem and he refuses to acknowledge it.”

“Have you actually tried to get him to acknowledge it?”

Jungkook is many things; he’s smart, capable, strong, his eyes are bright under the streetlights, and he’s compassionate, but he’s never been confrontational. Though you don’t doubt he’s concerned for his friend, you also don’t doubt that he’s never brought it up in front of Mingyu, at least directly; you reckon there’s been a lot of beating around the bush, a lot of surreptitious monologues about ‘seeking help when you need’, etcetera. The thought makes you laugh, and Jungkook looks at you quizzically.

“I mean, I made him watch a TED talk about sobriety last week, and he seemed intrigued…”

You raise a brow. Jungkook would bully you relentlessly for watching those videos, and you doubt he’d watch them even with someone’s best interest in mind.

“We were both high.”

The two of you laugh, looking away so as to not break entirely, and then accidentally making eye contact, breaking almost immediately after.

His laughter is loud, bright, and it brings you back to when you were kids.

You laugh silently, taking in large gasps of air whenever you feel the need to, and Jungkook can’t help but think of how you’ve had this habit since you were a toddler.

When a few tears slip inevitably, Jungkook doesn’t let you use the collar of your shirt to wipe them like AJ typically does, using the pads of his fingers to gently flick them off of your cheeks. (It’s another thing he’s done for years now, but you don’t think about it in the afterglow of laughing so hard that your ribs sting a bit.)

Thinking of AJ reminds you of the question Jungkook asked you before you grilled him about Mingyu. You wonder why you avoided it so desperately, and you wonder why you’re thinking so much about AJ today, when Jungkook is right in front of you.

He’s pretty like this, the pizza parlor’s sign lights up a little after 21:30, and the green and red hues make the dewy skin of his face look softer. He’s chewing at his straw, and has a lazy grin on his face, occasionally giggling when he undoubtedly remembers the outburst the two of you just had.

It’s simple, routinely, laughing with Jungkook, being with Jungkook, and your mind is no longer clouded with the wake, with how much your Tort Law professor hates your whole class, with how AJ lied to you, but you don’t suppose it’d be the worst thing to not leave Jungkook hanging.

“What about AJ, by the way?”

He looks up, and his eyes are just as big as they used to be when he was a toddler.

“You asked what his deal was, what’d you mean?”

Jungkook’s lazy grin is back as he stares at you, reaching across the table to push back a strand of hair that you hadn’t even noticed fall into your face. His touch is warm, and you hope the bright red light of the sign masks the soft blush that warms your face when he strokes the underside of your jaw before pulling away.

“I meant, like, you know,” he pauses, but you shake your head, still confused. Jungkook breathes to regroup, and continues. “The Wednesday drink thing, and how he’s the homescreen of your phone, and how you’re blushing right now after bringing him up? I know dating’s a bit tough but like, maybe there’s something there?”

The realization dawns upon you; Jungkook thinks you’re into AJ, and vice versa. You don’t know why it makes your stomach turn, so you attribute it to the pizza you’ve just had and the coffee from earlier.

The ridiculous urge to defend yourself like Jungkook’s accused you of something fights it’s way up your throat, accompanied by bile. You swallow it down, clearing your throat before you start your rebuttal statement. (You don’t think about how you’re thinking of this like a case, when it’s quite literally just your best friend talking about who you’re dating).

“The Wednesday drink thing’s only because he has a shift there after I’m done with classes, and it’s not like he gives them to me for free.”

Jungkook can’t tell why you look so serious now, back straight and face cold, voice icy. It’s a sharp contrast to the way you were speaking only a mere 10 minutes prior, and he wants to tell you that it’s nothing serious; that he wasn’t accusing you.

“He’s the homescreen of my phone because I look good in the picture, and also because it’s from my 21st birthday, which was just a good day in my life —“

“I think y-you misunderstood me?”

He doesn’t sound confident, but you stop speaking, unable to tell him that you weren’t, in fact, blushing because of AJ.

“There’s nothing there, Jungkook.”

He looks down, and then back up at you, the prickly feeling of discomfort crawling across his chest. Jungkook isn’t sure why he feels cornered, why he feels upset at the way you responded to something innocent he said.

It makes him think of another time, back in your first year of law school when he’d asked you why you hadn’t called him for a week; you’d straightened up, basically recounted every assignment you had due, every other engagement you had, went to hell and back to justify yourself when he was just asking a question.

It makes him think of countless other times, when you’d dissect questions like he was a prosecutor in a courtroom, when you’d pounce at him at the slightest indication of being cornered, when you’d feel the need to justify and self-assess even if he wasn't even in a 100 mile radius of asking you to do that.

He wants to tell you that you don’t have to feel like he’s forcing an answer out of you, that you have a life and you could’ve just laughed it off, that you don’t have to be afraid to have human instincts and relationships and that you’re his best friend.

Instead, he ignores the way your eyes look glossy, ignores the clear indication that you’ve had a stupidly hard day, ignores the screaming cries for someone to tell you that it’s okay, for someone to just ask what’s wrong — something he’s been on the fence of doing for the whole evening. He ignores it all, and gets up to throw his plate away.

“I’m sorry —“

“Need me to walk you to the train station?”

“Uh, no. I got it. Thanks.”

You follow with your own plate, picking your bag up from the seat beside you, and wave at Jungkook a bit awkwardly. He waves back, still not making eye contact with you, and lets you walk away without saying a word more.

Jungkook tries not to think about how pretty you are, tries not to think about how you’re going to cry in the solitude of your room which is how you’ve always dealt with emotions, tries not to think about whatever you could’ve been thinking of that had you on the edge the entire evening. He tries to think about Mingyu, sobriety, and a fraternity party he has to go to tomorrow. He tries to think about skipping his last class, and ends up thinking about how lovely your smile is.

You text AJ to pick you up from campus despite the fake excuse he’d thrown at you earlier even though you don’t really want to think of him, and you hope the person sitting across from you on the train doesn’t notice how you’re crying. It’s your boyfriend, it’s Jungkook and how you lashed out at him for no reason, it’s fucking AJ, and how Jungkook thinks you’re dating him when he’s just lied to you — it’s how AJ lied to you about a morning class — it’s Tort Law, and it’s the shaken espresso you had that seems to still linger on your tongue. You try to think about a party you’ve been invited to tomorrow, try to think about how badly you need to get laid, and end up thinking about Jungkook’s pretty eyes.

—

AJ ends up picking you up from outside the train station, and if he notices your red-rimmed eyes, he doesn’t say anything.

Jungkook’s words, the cause of you snapping him, his insinuations all come to mind when AJ’s this close to you. You can smell his deodorant, you can feel the thin hoodie he dons on your sleeve, you can hear the small breaths he takes; I know dating’s a bit tough but like, maybe there’s something there?”

Is there? You wished you would’ve asked Jungkook to elaborate on this theory of his; he’s observant, and as aforementioned, not one for confrontation of any kind — the thought makes your head hurt with guilt because you’ve just shown him that he shouldn’t, in fact, confront people lest they give him a reaction anywhere similar to yours — and it’s apparent that he was probably sitting on the thought for a while.

Is there? AJ looks at you warmly, the Wednesday drink thing is a bit intimate, he knows your schedule, knows your professors and how you feel about them, knows your apartment even when he's drunk and it’s dark, and you know all of these things when it comes to him. You think about it for a moment, and when you look up at him, he’s already staring down at you. It’s kind, a bit far away like he was doing some thinking of his own, too, and you’re grateful he doesn’t look away immediately.

AJ and you make sense together, if you were to put it logistically. Met in Law School, were friends for years before potentially getting together, and you’d be lying if you said it didn’t feel like a puzzle piece fitting into place. But logistics aren’t the game you play, and the longer you look at him, the more it settles in that there isn’t really much there. With Jungkook, for example, you’d notice the pretty doe shape in his eyes, the scar above his cheek, the slope of his nose and how when he blushes, the pink spreads from the tips of his ears inwards — with AJ, all you see is a handsome face.

Jungkook is your best friend, though, and again, it makes more sense to notice these nuances with him than with AJ and fuck, why are you even thinking about this?

AJ continues to look at you, and you’re thankful, not for his eerie silence as much as for the fact that he’s walking you home at night after you’ve had such a rough day. If being with Jungkook is routine, AJ is the soft of your sheets after a long day — he’s always there, always with you, even if he doesn’t really say anything to you.

(You fight this thought from appearing in your head, but evidently fail.)

Even today, he didn’t question where you were coming from, didn’t say that he couldn’t come get you because he had this supposed ‘early morning’ (which he didn’t, which you could not get over), didn’t say a single word, at least it until you did.

It’s a quiet question, one that has lingered in the back of your mind for the whole evening: “Why’d you lie, Alex?”

He looks startled, both at the rare use of his first name, and by the question itself.

“What… what do you mean, exactly?” His laugh is a bit forced, and he steps away from you, looking away.

“You said you have an early morning, but I know your Crim. Justice class starts at 2. You could’ve just said you didn’t wanna have dinner with me —“ you laugh at the end, hoping to lighten the atmosphere but it doesn’t work.

There is seriously something wrong with you today, but AJ breaks through that thought with a laugh.

“Early morning for work, ___. Internships don’t start till June, but doesn’t Cravath ask you to come in sometimes? It’s that. Some petty admin work.”

Your heart stops trying to commit suicide, and your shoulders relax for the first time since AJ handed you that damn drink this morning. You’d both landed top internships; you with Cravath, AJ with Watchell Lipton, and he was right, because you have gone in to do ‘petty admin work’ for them in the past month since you were accepted.

It’s a happy reminder of how well you’re doing, a happy reminder that your friend didn’t just lie to you, and you can’t help but laugh. It’s a sheepish one that turns genuine when you realize how accusatory you’d been, and you’re grateful again that he starts laughing along with you.

(You don’t notice his laugh the same way you did with Jungkook, but you also don’t dwell on that too much.)

“Fuck, man. I’m sorry, I’m really sorry.”

He throws an arm around your shoulder, pulling you into his upper body so he can plant a loud kiss on the crown of your head. It’s something he does with everyone, but the conversation you had over dinner remains at the forefront of your mind and you close your eyes to really take in the proximity, the ease with which he just touches you, the way it feels natural, and the way you don’t mind.

“Maybe you should ask questions on the spot instead of working yourself into a frenzy about them, huh?”

“Maybe I should. No yeah, I definitely should. I don't know why I’m being slick about it —“

He laughs at that, taking your hand to spin you in front of him, and then around.

If AJ notices the way your hair frames your face when he stops puppeteering you, if he notices the way your laugh echoes in his mind after you’ve stopped, if he notices the way you’ve remembered his classes, he doesn’t do anything about it. He had, however, noticed the way you were so obviously crying, and though he refuses to pry lest he invade your privacy, lest he finds out that he might’ve been the reason.

He stays quiet about it, though, all the way till he reaches the lobby of your apartment complex, which is when he repeats what Jungkook had done just about an hour prior, fixing a strand of your messy hair.

(You don’t blush like you had when Jungkook had done it, but AJ also doesn’t touch the underside of your jaw as gingerly as Jungkook had, so you convince yourself that it’s nothing)

“If it was hayfever, I know a great remedy, but if not, you should know that whatever you had to cry about, that it’s okay. If you can do Tort Law with Henderson, you can do anything.”

His assurance, paired with the fact that he hadn’t lied, paired with the fact that he’d kissed your head, paired with the way he’d spun you around like he was starring in some Glen Powell rom-com, paired with the way that he’d come and pick you up in the first place — all of it settles your heart fully, and you don’t even really remember why you’d cried in the first place.

“Thank you. For picking me up, and I’m sorry that I was so, you know —“

“Don’t worry about it, it’s literally going to be your job to be ‘so, you know’ okay?”

You nod, chuckling lightly, and watch him wave you goodbye. If you pronounce your own wave a little extra so he laughs at it and isn’t even slightly worried about you being upset, nobody has to know. And if you still can’t stop thinking about Jungkook and how you need to apologize to him, nobody has to know.

—

Jungkook despises his schedule on Thursdays. It’s class after class, a shift at his job, another class, and another class — typically, by the end of the day, his brain is nothing but mush, he’s frazzled; exhausted, and passes out for a much simpler Friday, but as it is, there’s been a lot more unconventional breaks in routine than he’s used to, and he ends up going to a party after his final class on this particular Thursday.

Mingyu invited him, but he’s not thinking about that, because thinking of his roommate makes him think of his conversation with you, which makes him think of how abruptly your manner had changed, which makes him feel bad for you, and also a little upset that you spoke to him that way, which makes him think of the notifications on his phone that he’s definitely not ignoring right now.

[from Elle Woods] jeongguk

[from Elle Woods] im sorry, i don’t know what that was or why I got so defensive about aj, and you didn’t deserve it

[from Elle Woods] i really missed you, it’s been weeks since we’ve talked

[from Elle Woods] actually, can i just call you?

[2 missed calls from Elle Woods]

He’d feel a little bad, because he knows that if you owe each other something, anything, it’s communication — you’ve been friends since you were literal infants, and he should know that there’s probably a very reasonable explanation for yesterday but he shuts his phone off, and recites the excuse for whenever he decides to get back to you.

___ie, I’m sorry, I was just busy — you know how Thursdays are, right?

He’s sure you’ll understand, and he can’t bring himself to continue thinking about it lest he breaks and gets himself into a longer-than-necessary phone call with you when he could be getting shitfaced to forget about the day he’s had; either that, or protecting Mingyu from throwing himself into premature liver failure as best as he possibly can.

Jungkook finds himself shoveling any remaining thoughts of you to the back of his head, another thing he’s being doing unconventionally often, and his short commute to the fraternity house Mingyu’s typo-filled message points him towards — another thing that should debase him, but the promise of alcohol (with a borderline frightening amount of emojis) keeps him going.

He realizes soon, that senior year is an absolute bitch, because it’s been months since he’s seen half of these people and it’s like nostalgia’s kicked him in the mouth, followed by the pungence of miscellaneous alcoholic drinks that you can only drink half a cup of before blacking out, followed by the familiar twinge of the fraternity party patented sweat.

He’s broken out of this haze, watching people pass by him as he slumps against the doorframe of the kitchen by the vaguely familiar voice of somebody he used to know very well —

“Jungkookie? At a party? As I live and breathe!”

Enter character: Lim Nayoung, Jungkook’s ex-fuckbuddy, ex-situationship, near ex-girlfriend. Though the first two are terms exclusively used by high school students, there’s really no other way to describe the relation he has (had) with her, and even as he hears her voice, there’s a rush of emotion that he had to swallow down before he gets a good look at her.

She’s, well, a sight to see; though Jungkook told her he liked her long hair a lot (especially when she styled it like yours, which isn’t something he’s willing to say out loud), she has it cut short. He thinks it suits her, and he makes a mental note to let her know as he tries his best to take a once-over of her subtly, but gives up shortly when he notices her gaze on him; expectant.

“It’s been a while, huh?” A soft grin makes its way up his face, and he fights the urge to pull her into a hug. “I love the hair.”

“What happened to liking it long? In that weird 90s blowout?”

(Your ‘weird 90s blowout’. The same hair you’ve been wearing since junior year of high school, but Nayoung doesn’t have to know, and Jungkook doesn’t want to tell her.)

“I actually still like that look, but this is working for you, baby,” the pet name slips from his lips, force of habit, and he’d be lying if he said he didn’t notice the way her eyes lit up for a second. “Where’s everyone else?” It’s a quick attempt to salvage his slip-up, but it doesn’t seem like Nayoung notices the deflection. She doesn’t point him to the group of friends he’s so familiar with, though, instead dragging him by the forearm into the kitchen.

He catches sight of Mingyu by the drinks as Nayoung pours him something from a punch bowl, bright red with fruits strewn about the top, and Jungkook’s sure just a smell of it would kill a medieval peasant. He does, in fact have an incentive for being here, and is reminded of that by his aforementioned roommate’s loud shriek of his name.

Nayoung gets to him before Mingyu, passing him a solo cup that she so graciously garnished with an orange slice, and he strokes her hair as a silent thanks, and a preemptive apology for what’s about to hit her, vis-à-vis Hurricane Mingyu;

“Yo, JK? You came, man!” The side hug he gets is sloppy, and Mingyu’s voice is so slurred that Jungkook can’t help but assume he’s been pre-gaming this for a while. The thought is cut off violently when his jaw is grabbed, forehead pressing against Mingyu’s in a manner too intimate for Jungkook to deal with without alcohol in his system. “You’re the man, I can’t believe we haven’t partied at all this year!” He shoves Jungkook away, while the latter looks dazed (read: disgusted) at how strongly Mingyu’s breath smelled of alcohol.

He takes a sip of the concoction in his cup, wincing just a bit as the gasoline-y aftertaste fully settles in, right before the realization that it has, indeed, been way too long since he's last been to a party at all. He downs the drink, trying not to let his aversion show immediately before he looks down at Nayoung, nodding towards the drinks again.

“Down like water, huh? What happened to my whiskey addict?” Nayoung’s voice is bleary over the terrible EDM drop that’s just played over the speakers, but Jungkook laughs anyways — whiskey’s been his drink of choice ever since you managed to get away with buying a bottle at 17, and he thinks about you every single time he drinks it; more specifically, the way you’d all but hurled it in front of a bodega, and then the way the two of you had drunkenly ran off.

Whatever was in the drink is working, apparently, because Jungkook can feel the buzz of the drink in his veins, and as he pushes aside the memory of the two of you, there’s a burst of confidence that pulses through him. It isn’t anything forward, just the personality so many of his friends were well acquainted with — cocky, a little egotistical, a little too hot for his own good — fighting it’s way out of the somber senior he’s been playing for a good few months now.

He leans against the punch table so he’s eye-level with Nayoung, who shies away from the sudden proximity, and if she’s blushing just a bit, he pretends like he doesn’t notice in favor of grabbing the drink out of her hand and drinking it all in one go. It stings on its way down, and she stares at him, mouth agape at what she’s just seen him do twice in a row.

“There’s like, an entire bottle of vodka in that.”

Jungkook smiles, a little lazy and a little lopsided.

“Is there another full bottle somewhere?”

The catastrophic thing about Jungkook isn’t that he makes bad decisions, it’s just that he refuses to admit when he’s made a bad decision.

To set the scene, think of Jungkook, on the lawn of the insanely big glorified fraternity mansion, 7 shots of vodka in and drunk enough that his equilibrium is fully askew and he’s slurring his words in the dialect only you’re familiar with, one he’s grown out of years ago.

Nayoung is still by his side, reasonably sober compared to him, and a couple of his friends — both close and those who he all but neglected in favor of computer science senior year — surround him. They’ve chosen the surprisingly well kempt area because EDM and copious amounts of alcohol stop making sense when you hit your twenties, and as it is, Jungkook’s previous attempts to keep you out of his brain are failing horrifically.

They talk about the time Nayoung and Jungkook got drunk, called Namjoon and told him the only identifiable landmark was the moon, talk about Seokjin throwing up at the foot of the Statue of Liberty, talk about their lives, Mingyu talks about his endeavors in bed (which is weird because he definitely doesn’t know half the people in this vicinity) and Jungkook thinks about you.

He thinks about feeling bad that he’s not replying, thinks about how you don’t drink a lot because drunk driving killed your boyfriend, thinks about how smart you are and how he wishes you had an easier childhood, how he wishes you weren’t so hard on yourself, wishes you were here and that you hadn’t moved out, wishes he could see you everyday, and wishes that he could just get you out of his head.

He thinks about you, uncharacteristically quiet until Nayoung calls him on it —

“What’s got you all worked up?” Her question is really just a figure of speech, but he wants to tell her everything because if anyone knows Jungkook even a smidge close to the way you know him, it’s Nayoung.

“N’thin, nothing,” he takes a pause to breathe out, regroup and look down at Nayoung. It takes him a while to really gather that the group has split up, all going their separate ways after getting shitfaced, presumably to find themselves another drink or a hookup. He wonders if you’ve ever hooked up with someone at a party, wonders if you’d say yes if he were to ask —

“Wanna go upstairs? I hate this fucking music.”

[In retrospect, he should’ve known, at that point, that he was making a horrible mistake, but again, he’d never admit it]

“Yeah. Not because I wanna sit in a fraternity kid’s bed, but because I wanna shoot Avicii right about now.” It takes Nayoung a while to comprehend his slurred words, but she laughs at the sentiment before telling him that Avicii’s very much not alive. It makes Jungkook grin morbidly, and he finds himself grabbing her hand to pull her back into the house.

In the essence of wanting to be a good friend, he looks around to catch a glimpse of Mingyu anywhere, and finds him near the kitchen. He’s, surprisingly so, not drunk outwardly, but Jungkook figures that’s bound to change soon; the party is nowhere near being over. His roommate catches Nayoung’s hand in his, and shoots him a horrifically confused look, which Jungkook pays no mind to.

It doesn’t take long for them to make their way upstairs and into the only bedroom on the floor that isn’t locked or mysteriously producing obscene pornstar-esque sex sounds, and even though the bed is horribly unkempt in a way that would become the butt of your jokes for months on end, they settle.

Fuck, Jungkook has got to stop thinking about you. It’s becoming dangerously apparent that you’re becoming the forefront of his thoughts this evening, and he just can’t figure out why. It’s happened before, too, every time he’d go out to get lunch or dinner with you, every time you’d force him to come with you to The Met or every time he’d force you to come with him to a Yankees game, you’d just plague his brain for the next couple of days. He thinks it because you’re his best friend, that it’s normal to think about someone who’s entire childhood has been riddled with yours, but he can’t exactly focus on that thought when Nayoung pulls her jacket off.

It’s one she bought when they used to… be involved, and Jungkook smiles ever so lightly when he remembers the day.

“That from our little detour to Jersey?”

She looks up at him, and the light of the room is a bit too dim to properly make out her features, but it reflects off of her collarbones, gets his mind all fuzzy when she reciprocates the dopey smile he has on.

“Yeah, yep. I always keep the memorabilia.”

“I mean, the other memorabilias,” he quotes the word, still feeling really fucking buzzed, “were just tattoos. Bit hard to get rid of those, huh?”

Nayoung laughs, and Jungkook feels the claws of past intimacy scratch down his back. It’s familiar, being like this with her, and he values that. Values her, even if she never really gave him an actual reason for breaking it off — ‘we’re in different places, clearly’ she’d told him, and if he sat down to really think about it, he might be able to decipher her words in the context of their relationship but Jungkook literally cannot think of more than three things at once right now.

She lies down flat on the bed, and he has half a mind to tell her off about frat boys and their abysmal hygiene, but he thinks it’s a good idea, and readjusts himself so he’s laying right next to her. She tilts her head to look at him, and he finds the ceiling to be the most interesting thing in the world as soon as it registers in his mind what might be happening.

“What happened with you?”

“Huh?”

“Just… how you disappeared after senior year, how you were dozing off even when you’re definitely drunk. It’s so unlike you to not be like, the one keeping the conversation going.”

I can’t stop thinking about my best friend. I’m worried about her, and senior year is ruining my life because I’m not sure I even want to do computer science and my roommate needs to be put in a sobriety program and I need to talk to my best friend right now but I’m ignoring her.

“Yeah, it’s just — work stuff, ya know? ‘S been crazy this year. You know.”

Though his intentions aren’t to give her the wrong idea about this ordeal, he can’t help himself from turning his head to look at her. He laughs, and she doesn’t wince even when his (presumably) vodka-smelling breath hits her face. Nayoung’s giggle is quiet, and she lifts a hand to his head to push back his hair.

If Jungkook keens just a bit, nobody has to know.

“I don’t know, really. I mean, I don’t have a sick internship, so work’s not that bad for me.”

Jungkook’s pupils are blown out, and when Nayoung’s eyes meet his, he sobers up enough for him to realize just how close they are. With a portion of his brain suddenly not inebriated, he should realize what’s happening, he should pull away, but he also realizes that you haven’t crossed his head for a good couple of minutes, which is good enough of a sign for him to stay put.

“Your thing with ___ not work out?”

He’s confused at why you’re being brought up, but he shakes his head as best as he can manage; there’s no way she remembers you, and there’s no way she thought there was a ‘thing’ between you and him. That would be weird, but he can’t help but think of what she’d said — we’re in different places, clearly.

Different places.

“There was… no thing.”

“So there’s nothing with her and you?”

“No, Nayoung-ie. Never was.”

Different places? Was there a thing?

When she kisses him, he doesn’t stop her.

(And when she asks him to fuck her; delirious, eyes wide, skin dewy, he doesn’t stop himself.)

It’s messy, limbs tangled as he’s basically bent her over in half to plow his cock into her, more drunk off the pretty sounds she makes — familiarly, intimacy — than the copious amounts of drinks he’s had. She’s moaning his name out like a prayer, and he’s leaning over her like a god, and Jungkook’s stopped being religious, but he thinks it’s sin, the way she envelopes him and gives herself to him. The way he doesn’t have to ask, the way she’s meeting his hips halfway.

Exodus 20:14, Proverbs 6:32, Hebrews 13:4 — You shall not commit adultery, But a man who commits adultery has no sense; whoever does so destroys himself, Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral.

He remembers these verses, and he remembers your pretty eyes, and you’re all he can think about when he looks down at Nayoung. Does that make him an adulterer? Does that make him a cheater, dirty, sinful? He fucks into her deeper, inevitably hits the spot — familiarity, intimacy — and drinks her moans in. He remembers the slope of your nose, and how you’d laughed together over dinner a day ago, how your eyes had looked under the streetlights. Nayoung tears up, tells him it feels so fucking good, and he thinks of the tears in your eyes. His hips stutter, and it makes her dig her blunt nails into the clothes expanse of his shoulders, but he welcomes the pain better than he welcomes the guilt of having let you walk away.

He feels wretched, feels horribly for Nayoung and feels the vodka in his system crawl its way up his throat but he keeps it down. He’s close, she’s close, and if this was a bad decision, nobody has to know.

Jungkook feels her lose herself over him, and he lets his mind drift to you one last time, biting his lip so he doesn’t groan out your name as his hips lose their rhythm. When he pulls out, one hand lazily pumping his cock, he tries to picture Nayoung, her tits bouncing pretty under her shirt, how she’s trying to regroup all because of him, how she laughed and how it felt when she touched his hair but all his brain can manage is you.

Fuck, he feels wretched. Disgusting, like it’s incestual to think about you the way he is but he welcomes it, let’s you into his mind after fighting it for hours, and when he spills all over Nayoung’s stomach, there’s some sick gratification that coats him.

And that’s the thing about Jungkook. This was a horrible decision, down to every last detail. Fucking your ex-fuckbuddy in a random frat boy’s room after getting shitfaced because you haven’t drank that much in months, and ending up thinking about your best friend even if the goal was to not do that? Bad, bad decision.

But he takes it in stride. Thinks of this as a silver lining, a distraction from you as though you haven’t clouded his head like a stupid wet dream while he fucked somebody else.

And that’s the thing about Jungkook. He refuses to admit that he’s messed up.

Jungkook doesn’t take much time to recuperate from sex. He has incredible stamina coming from the insane workout regime he absolutely has to keep up with, and he can definitely go multiple times in one night, thank you very much, but he can’t bring himself to even think of agreeing to fuck Nayoung again.

He hopes she’s on the same page when he looks at her, the pacing of her breath slowing down as she sits up slowly. He reaches out, stroking her arm right above her elbow where the matching tattoo she got with him sits. Jungkook distracts himself from deciding on what to say as he recalls how they’d gotten it together, how he’d called you right after to show —

Fuck, he hadn’t even thought about you. Granted, you don’t fit into the situation very well, but he doesn’t doubt that you’ll be impartial to telling him off about what he’s just done. He thinks about what to tell you, and remembers the unread messages on his phone, and remembers what he should be doing, which is somehow getting the idea of ever doing this again out of Nayoung’s head.

“Well, you’re never gonna be bad at sex.”

He laughs sheepishly, shuffling to pull his boxers over his still exposed dick. He has no idea what the hell to say to that, and it seems like it’s about to lead to a monologue about how since he’s never ‘gonna be bad at sex’, that they should continue — or return — to be fuckbuddies.

Fuck.

“But we aren’t doing that again.”

Jungkook’s neck snaps up and he lets out a breath of relief he had no idea he was even holding. Nayoung looks incredibly beautiful, and he would lay everything at her feet out of gratitude because she’s just made this whole ordeal inexplicably easy for him. Her face is bright, like it always used to get after they fucked, and Jungkook feels a bout of familiarity catch in his throat, this time accompanied with a sick rush of guilt.

“Uh, w-why do you say that?” His voice is gentle, coaxing the answer out of her, though he can predict what she’s about to say.

We’re in different places, clearly.

“I mean, you were shitfaced just half an hour ago. This was like, a drunken rebound,” Jungkook laughs at that, quiet and low, reaching up to rub at his nape. He doesn’t feel as drunk now, but Nayoung’s next words definitely do the job of sobering him up. “You’re fun, but I want a relationship before I graduate and I honestly don’t think you even like me.”

His world pauses for a split second, and his heart breaks for her; because he made her feel unloved.

Jungkook thinks of Nayoung. Sitting in front of him, face tinged a bit pink from the incredible sex (Exodus 20:14, Proverbs 6:32, Hebrews 13:4), hair cut short and hair long in a blowout (the one you sport all the time) (he thinks your hair is the prettiest shade of brown, and he remembers running his fingers through it). He thinks of Nayoung, matching tattoos and drives to Jersey and how she kissed him with so much fervency and how he tried so hard to match it.

“Your thing with ___ not work out?”

He thinks of calling you after getting tattoos, thinks of how your laugh echoed through his phone in the empty street. He thinks of texting you (shit, he has to text you) for ideas of things to give Nayoung. He thinks of Nayoung opening those gifts and throwing her arms around his neck. He thinks of getting drunk with Nayoung and telling her about childhood memories with you — he thinks of the house you grew up in and the one next to it, where he grew up.

He thinks of you telling him how hard school was, how young you were in high school. He thinks of you crying when your boyfriend died. He thinks of your overpriced white mochas and 2Bros Pizza and fucking AJ. He thinks of how you told him to date Nayoung about two years ago, he thinks about how you’ve always been under this multitude of pressure to excel, and he thinks about how he loves you, and how he loves (fuck) Nayoung.

“Of course I like you, Nana.”

Jungkook remembers how she’d lay down on his bicep after he fucked her one night, telling him about the silly nickname. He remembers thinking then, about how you never had a silly nickname because your parents were too focused on getting you into the top ranking kindergarten in all of the Upper East Side. He remembers laughing at Nayoung’s story, and then making a note to give you a stupid nickname.

And then, Jungkook realizes she’s right.

He doesn’t like her, at least not enough to date her. He thinks of his best friend more than he thinks of her, and Nayoung probably already knows this, hence her little comment earlier.

“Your thing with ___ not work out?”

“But I think I like you too much to fuck you and let myself leave it at that. So you’re wrong about that. But I also think that I can’t give you that relationship. I’m busy, and I think I need to figure out like, my future job and stuff and fuck, I’m sorry if I led you on.”

The look Nayoung gives him reaches down into his stomach and tugs at his gut. She looks pitiful, like he’s the one who’s being hurt in this situation. He looks equally as confused as she does woeful.

“I don’t think your job is all you need to figure out, Jungkook.”

“Your thing with ___ not work out?”

Exodus 20:14, Proverbs 6:32, Hebrews 13:4

He doesn’t ask her what she means, and she doesn’t elaborate.

Jungkook watches her redress, and he chooses to do the same as the reality of being butt naked on a random frat boy’s bed nearly gives him whiplash.

He feels the weight of his phone in the back pocket of his jeans, and realizes how desperately he needs to talk to you, to let you talk to him. To let you tell him what went wrong yesterday. He thinks he won’t tell you what just went down with Nayoung.

Nayoung.

She’s beautiful in her clothes again, a little messy, but Jungkook feels the urge to never let anyone hurt her, including himself. It’s love, he knows immediately, when the dim lamp hits the apples of her cheeks and he can see the flutter in her eyelashes when she blinks. But it’s not romantic, and he’s a bit relieved when he realizes this. (It feels nothing like how he does when he looks at you). This love is platonic, not brotherly but friendly, like he’d pick her up from a club and remember her restaurant orders and be the one to haze any of her boyfriends.

And he tells her just this.

“I love you, Nana. You know that, yeah?”

She looks over at him, and it must click in her head what he's implying, because her eyes brighten just a little.

(If they’re glossing over because she’s about to cry, Jungkook will pretend he doesn’t notice.)

“I love you too, Jungkook. You know that, yeah?”

He nods, and he feels the taste of his love for her heavy on his tongue. This love is platonic, not brotherly but friendly, like he’d pick her up from a club and remember her restaurant orders and be the one to haze any of her boyfriends.

(He thinks he loves you platonically as well.)

(If the love he feels when he looks at you is entirely different than the love he feels when he looks at Nayoung, even though he cites them both as being platonic, nobody has to know.)

—

[from JayKayz] im sorry baby, i didn’t check my phone all day.

[from JayKayz] you know how thursdays are.

[from JayKayz] dont apologize. i don’t wanna talk over call, twll me when you’re free

—

It’s about a month after the small reconciliation that Jungkook tells you about how he’d fucked Nayoung.

The last couple of weeks have been incredible; works dwindled down over the past couple of weeks for the both of you, finals are in their last bow before summer, and after a brunch at one of Manhattan’s finest rooftop bars where the two of you had drank a shit ton of margaritas, the guilt of potentially offending Jungkook no longer eats you alive.

It reminds Jungkook of, funnily enough, his freshman year of college — going out as he came in — when the grief of losing your boyfriend wasn’t eating you alive any longer. The two of you had done every cheesy New York tourist thing; ice skating at Bryant Park down to lunch on top of the Empire State Building, and you’d laughed, learned to ballroom dance from YouTube videos only to botch it horribly in the streets; it was the first time Jungkook felt that rush down his throat, and he’s begun to feel it again recently.

It’s like the montage of a romantic comedy where the main characters get to really know each other: a part you savor, and a part Jungkook tends to skip so he can get to whatever conflict awaits. The two of you have done everything together, continued to get weekly pizzas at 2Bros, where you’ve openly made fun of him for his order choice, gotten white mochas at the small business you love too much (he thinks it’s not that great but spends $18 anyways), rewatched the first 5 seasons of Friends (he’s realized you can literally quote it), gone to every Yankees game you could get tickets to (you make him explain all the plays even if he’s done it a million times), spent too much time and too much money at the Statue of Liberty, gotten pictures together at random photo booths in the street, slept under the stars, slept tangled in each other’s arms, drunkenly made out once only to never talk about it —

It’s going better than it ever has, and Jungkook can count on one hand the memories he has that beat out any of the ones that he’s spent with you.

However, as a callback to the Glen Powell rom-com plot curve, there has to be a conflict. So when Jungkook tells you about that drunken memory that still is very much in his mind, you really think you should’ve seen it coming.

It happens over lunch, another sick foreshadow you should’ve seen barreling towards you, and it hits you in a way you can’t exactly explain. He doesn’t take it as seriously; doesn’t think you’d care because it’s not like any of this is inherently romantic. It’s not like he cheated on you; the two of you were just best friends who hadn’t even seen each other in a while when it happened.

(If the Bible verses are at the tip of his tongue when Jungkook thinks of it, he leaves that part out of the recollection.)

He laughs when he tells you, and you savor the sweet sound, the one that’s low and tugs at your heart in an inexplicable manner.

It starts off as a conversation about how he cannot drink vodka anymore, and you immediately wish you hadn’t asked when he speaks: “You know that time, when you got really pissed at me for saying that AJ shit to you?”

The memory sends something queasy down your stomach. It shoots down your legs for a split second before you remember his words from a month back.

You don’t have to explain yourself, I get it.

It must’ve been a hard day, huh? That fucker got you a shaken espresso, Jesus.

Yeah I know he had no idea, but still. I do. And it makes me feel so shitty for you.

You don’t have to explain yourself.

“I’d say pissed is an overstatement.”

“Overstatement for you, you have the best attorneys in the country teaching you on random Tuesday. For me,” his hands reach to rest dramatically over his heart, and you laugh unironically, making a note to yourself to only order mocktails from this moment forward. “It was like getting bitchslapped.”

That genuinely makes you laugh.

“But whatever, the next day, I went to a party and got shitfaced to deal with the pain.”

That reminds you of how you’d dealt with snapping at him the day after — how you had hyperventilated in your room when he didn’t reply, how you had to skip a class because your heart wouldn’t stop beating at the prospect of losing him.

You don’t have to explain yourself.

“And I fucked Nayoung. So no more vodka for me.”

“Lim Nayoung?”

You don’t know why you ask, obviously it’s her.

Obviously it’s Lim Nayoung. The girl who has a matching tattoo with Jungkook on her arm. The girl who has gifts you told him to get for her decorating her shelves. The sweet girl who never stopped Jungkook from speaking to you even if the ‘girl best friend archetype made perfect sense. The girl who has a jacket from when Jungkook and her had almost had a Ross/Rachel wedding after getting drunk in Jersey. His ex-fuckbuddy, hell, his ex-girlfriend because who does all of that with someone who’s supposed to be strictly physical.

Obviously it’s Lim Nayoung.

Obviously you shouldn’t be this fucking surprised.

Obviously your heart shouldn’t sink to the tresses of your stomahc.

Obviously this wasn’t meant to be romantic.

“Yeah, her. It was fucking crazy, I don’t think I’ve ever drank that much.”

His voice is fuzzy in your ears, and you can’t look him in the eyes properly. You take a sip of the drink that’s next to you, willing yourself to suddenly get wasted so you never remember this moment.

Why does it make a sharp pain go through your left side? Why do you have to clench your palms into a fist to subside said pain. Why did you think this was going somewhere, why did you think Jungkook wasn’t still hung up on her.

You think of AJ, and how he doesn’t even know about your ex-boyfriend. You think of your ex-boyfriend, and shaken espressos, and wakes, and how Jungkook’s the only person who’s been through all of that with you.

You think of how you graduate in less than a month, and you think of how Jungkook will have attended six of your graduations by that point. You think of Nayoung, how pretty she is, and how much you think she deserves him.

You wonder why you think you would ever deserve him, and you wonder why you thought it would end in anything but an eternal friendship; beautiful, intimate, but forever bound by the jagged cuffs of platonicity. You wonder if he, even for a fleeting moment — when you were tangled in his sheets, when you laughed at his stupid king-kong jokes at the Empire State Building, when you reached for his hand during the climaxes of horror movies, when your lips were fervent on his in that back alley — thought that this would go anywhere.

“Maybe we need to get you in that sobriety program, huh?”

If your voice cracks, you pray he doesn’t notice. You pray the laugh you get out of him is genuine, and you pray that he didn’t look at Nayoung so warmly, only to feel just as guilty as you had a month prior.

AJ has no idea why you’re at his apartment, nor does he have any idea as to why you’re drunk. It’s way too early in the day for you to be wasted; in fact, he distinctly remembers you telling him that you and Jungkook were going out, which is why you couldn’t make it to the lunch he had proposed.

Were you getting drunk at noon? He knows you like margaritas, but he also knows that you have an insane tolerance; how many did you drink to get you this —

“H- he doesn’t love me.”

You interrupt the tangent of his thoughts with a hiccuped, slurred out sentence, and his entire face contorts trying to decipher what you’re saying, and then why you’re saying it.

“Hey, hey — wait, come in, what are you saying? Who doesn’t love you?”

Your skin is warm under his touch as he gently tugs at your arm to pull you past the threshold of his door, and he tries not to look too hard at the way your lips glisten under the dim light of his entranceway. He tries not to notice the way your hair is a little messy, undoubtedly from the wind, and how pretty your collarbones look under the small top you’re wearing —

Jungkook.

You’re talking about Jungkook, and he knows this not because there’s literally nobody else you could be talking about, but because there’s nobody who could get you this upset by ‘not loving you’.

(Do you love him?)

He sits you down on one of the barstools he keeps in front his kitchen countertop, and you slump your head down onto your arms, mumbling incoherently.

(Do you love him?)

He pours out a glass of water for you, and pats your head gently, touch lingering for a second to give you even the slightest inkling of comfort in this outwardly distressed state.

You lift your head, eyes red-rimmed and glossy with tears.

AJ doesn’t feel like this often. He jokes about how the two of you grew up, devoid of the privilege of showing normal emotions, bottling them up and spilling them over textbook pages and only ever being allowed to feel happy upon seeing numbers scribbled in red at the top of test pages. He jokes about the two of you ending up in Ivy Leagues at the cost of having normal human feelings; he knows that he’s perceptive and sharp and he likes to think that he has you all figured out, but when you look at him like that, he knows that he doesn’t.

He doesn’t know why you told him to never make you a shaken espresso again, he doesn’t know what relationship you and Jungkook even have, he doesn’t know why you’re this upset over him not loving you.

He does, however, know that even if Jungkook doesn’t love you, he might.

AJ met you in your first year of law school, and he remembers thinking that you were the only person in the whole class who was fit to be his rival; you’d been only person other than him who’d gotten through the cold calls, the only person who’d read all the way to the end of the syllabus, the one person he would accept as a ‘rival’, like he was in a Viola Davis drama, if you may.

He’d spoken to you after class — a little cocky, a little smug — and you’d been nothing but sweet. Soft voice, pretty smile, quips that had him looking away to stop himself from laughing, he liked you immediately.

The two of you had really done everything together — studied at ungodly hours, called each other drunk to drive the other home, you had inside jokes and three years worth of memories, you’d helped him through breakups and he’d gotten you free coffee every week for a year now — the rapport he had with you was one he’d never ever expected, and the way he looked at you, felt about you, was something he’d never ever expected.

He had his girlfriends, and he told you about them while you’d answer with a curt joke about never having dated anybody, but he’d never ever looked at them like he looked at you. Never noticed the furrow in their brows when they read something hard to understand, never noticed their lopsided smiles and the way they’d drink, but never enough to really get them wasted. And the thing is, AJ hadn’t cared that he saw all of these things, because perceptive as he was, all you’d ever been to him was a brilliant girl who he’d be sure to keep up with after law school.

Right now, though? He knows. He knows why he noticed, he knows why it bothers him that you might love Jungkook back, he knows that you graduate soon and that he doesn’t have much time, and even if he did, it wouldn’t matter because you might love Jungkook back —

“AJ, Jungkook doesn't love me.”

“Yikes.”

He wants to say more. Wants to tell you that it doesn’t matter what Jungkook thinks, because I love you, and I think you’re incredible and I’ve spent the past 3 years ignoring it but I’ve never ever ignored you and I love you.

“He fucked Nayoung.”

AJ has no idea who that is, but he wants to sock Jungkook in the face for having this girl, this amazing girl with him for his entire life and fucking somebody else.

“I’m sorry.”

I’m sorry he did that, and I’m sorry you don’t know that I would never do that.

“He —“ you pause to sob: a soft, strangled noise that makes AJ’s stomach turn. “He doesn’t love me.”

“Do you love him?”

Say no. Say no. Say no. Say no. Say no.

“Fuck, AJ. He doesn’t —“ you don’t again, shoving your head back into your arms.

“Do you love him, though?”

AJ’s not sure why he’s asking, because he knows that there’s no way you’d be upset if he didn’t love you back. He thinks of it like a prosecution case; he’s gotten enough out of you on the stand that everybody can draw the conclusion but he has to get it out of you.

A surefire kill.

“Hm?”

Your eyes are bleary when you look up, half from crying and half from being the drunkest you’ve ever been. Your hair is still messy, and your lips are bitten red from all the quiet crying you’ve been doing. He can’t cry in his kitchen, not when you’ve been here laughing, not when his granite countertops hold years of your touch, not when you’re unraveling a foot away from him.

“I think I do, AJ. I really think I do.”

“Fuck, baby. I’m sorry.”

I’m sorry that I thought I could have you, when Jungkook’s always been the one you wanted.

“He used to be like, the one person —“ pause to hiccup. “I never thought I’d love like that. But we got closer after the fucking, shaken espresso day last month. And I guess the proximity j-just set it in.”

He can’t tell if the reason your words are so mangled in his ears is because the sound of his own heart crashing into his stomach is so loud, or because you’re slurring your words that much.

“Drink some water, please.”

Say you’re lying, please.

—

Jungkook doesn’t exactly know why you ordered another 3 margaritas in the middle of your lunch detour, and he doesn’t know why you stopped looking him directly in the eyes right after he told you that he’d had sex with Nayoung. He doesn’t know why you insisted on drinking when you never get to a point where being wasted is even an option, and he doesn’t know why you so fervently denied him walking you home.

He doesn’t know why he stays awake at night thinking of you, either.

Jungkook is surprisingly introspective for somebody who zones in and out of conversation so much, who is typically dazed and doesn’t have much to offer when it comes to picking up obvious hints thrown at him, but he knows himself quite well.

Better than you, he’d argue.

The sheets are warm around his waist, and he has one arm propped under his head as he stares at the ceiling, eyes wide without even a hint of sleep in the tresses of them, which is unusual for it being the middle of the night. He remembers how a month prior, all you’d ever been was his best friend. He remembers the little fall-out and how you’d gotten together for dinner, how pretty you’d looked and wonders why he’d focused on that when he simply never had done that before.

He remembers the day after, and how he’d taken another girl to bed. Jungkook remembers faint Bible verses about adultery, how he couldn’t get you out of his head, and he remembers what Nayoung had told him that night, as long as what she’d told him when they broke it off.

“I don’t think your job is all you need to figure out, Jungkook.”

“Your thing with ___ not work out?”

“We’re in different places, clearly.”

He never thought about what she meant when they’d split; the pain of losing someone who’s memory he had literally etched into his skin was too imminent for him to even think about the ending scene. He also never thought about what she meant when she’d walked out of the fraternity room that day; he’d made up with you right after, and the following month was you, you, and more you. Focusing on Nayoung’s words and the small sliver of conversation they’d engaged in hadn’t even been an afterthought, at least until he’s brought her up today and you, like similar poles of a magnet, quite literally repelled him.

But really, what was she even talking about?

Why would there be a thing with you? Sure, the two of you were close, and sure, he’d probably talked about you and called you and FaceTimed you too much for her security, but he’d always thought the concept of him having a ‘girl best friend’ was what annoyed her, and not the notion that the two of you would have a ‘thing’.

Why would there be a thing with you? Sure, he idolized you and told her how smart he thought you were, but him and Nayoung were never official, and he’d only ever assumed that she was confused as to why he was always talking about some other girl after literally sleeping with her -

Oh.

It hits him like a shot to the heart, and he physically sits up to grab his phone because he has to confirm this sudden realization.

The look Mingyu had given him at the party shoots to the forefront of his brain, Nayoung’s words echo, and the way your resolve has crumbled when he told you about her suddenly makes a lot more sense.

In fact, it all makes sense.

I don’t think your job is all that you need to figure out.

She was talking about you. About how he was hung up on you and never even realized it —

We’re clearly in different places.

She was talking about you. About how she was willing to be invested with him, but the place he was stuck at, was you.

The ringing of his phone as he calls Nayoung seems louder than it usually is. It’s daunting, like he’s hoping she doesn’t pick up with each ring so he doesn’t have to face the reality he’s been unknowingly ignoring for… fuck, he doesn’t even know how long.

“Jungkook? It’s 2 in the morning. Are you okay?”

“Why did we break up, Nayoung?”

His voice is hoarse, and if he wasn’t so fucking stressed, he thinks about how proud you’d be for putting on the ‘interrogation voice’ you’d introduced him to in your second year of Law School.

“What?” Her laugh is quiet, laced with sleep, and Jungkook wonders if she should hang up and say sorry for waking her. “We weren’t really together, so I wouldn’t call it a break up —“

Her pause is long, and Jungkook doesn’t correct her, doesn’t bring up the tattoos and leather jackets and how they’d nearly eloped and the fact that they just had sex a month prior. She’s right, and he needs her to continue now.

“But I always assumed that you had something going on with __”

“You mean the time I called her after we got matching tattoos?” He can’t fight the urge to make the joke, even though it just dawned on him that you were, indeed, the straw on the camel’s back that broke him and Nayoung up. It just dawned on him that he might be in love with his best friend, and that he’d hurt Nayoung because of it, and that you might love him back.

Maybe.

He ignores that, and laughs wryly at the silly anecdote, thanking every religious figure he can think of when she also laughs.

“Yeah, that, but also just… your relationship. The way you obsessively talked about her and were literally always on call with her was one thing, but…” she pauses like she’s thinking about what to say next, how to describe the end of it all to him in a way that won’t flip his entire world around, not knowing that she’d already done that. Not knowing that you’d already done that.

“She came over once to pick us up when we got drunk. It was the same night I was talking about at the party, when we told Joon the closest thing to us was the moon? Yeah, ___ came and got us that night.”

“I knew right then, honestly. The way you looked at her was fucking insane. When you used to look at me, my friends would say that it was like I’d done every good thing in the world for you. But when you looked at her, it was like she’d saved you from every bad thing that could’ve ever happened to you. It was like, relief. Like you could let it all down in front of her. And I’d never been on the receiving end of that look; not ever when you were sober. Being like that and looking at her like that completely shitfaced? I knew I couldn’t stand in the way of the two of you, even if it literally killed me.”

He doesn’t process it immediately, choosing to focus on the last sentence, because feelings for you aside, he felt like the most massive douchebag in the world for making her feel that way.

“Nayoung, I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry. I honestly — I had no idea, I really didn’t —“

“Jungkook, I know. And I know you’re probably trying not to drive yourself insane thinking of whether she loves you back.”

He definitely is, but he doesn’t tell her this in fear that it’ll just hurt her more.

“No it’s not like that, I’m just, so incredibly sorry that I put you through that, you deserve so much more, you deserve the relationship you want and I feel like shit —“

“What do you mean it’s not like that, Jungkook? You’re not thinking about whether she likes you back?”

“Huh?”

“You don’t think she loves you back?”

Do you love him back? Do you look at him like he’s saved you from every bad thing that could’ve ever happened to you? Do you? Will you ever?”

“I don’t… know?”

“When you called her that night, you tripped over your own feet. She knew exactly where we were based off of that.”

Summer of 2006.

The field he’d gotten wasted with Nayoung, except he only remembers you.

Remembers how you’d just gotten promoted up to the fourth grade, remembers how you were licking down the side of your ice cream cone; vanilla with sprinkles, as always. He had his mint chocolate chip, and your mothers were on a bench a couple of feet away from you.

The sun had made your hair look golden, your eyes were bright, and your smile was so pretty that he couldn’t hold your gaze for longer than three seconds. He remembers this, because he’d physically tripped over his own feet when you looked at him just a couple of seconds too long.

The small ‘oof’ that he’d let out when he’d fallen, damp grass and soil under his tender palms, knees tickled by the summer green just seconds later, the way you’d gasped and abandoned your ice cream cone on the ground to come tend to him, and your mothers rushing over too, laughing at how much you cared for him.

He’d always, always tripped over his own feet at that spot, always fallen with that little ‘oof’ and soon realized that it wasn’t really because he couldn’t make eye contact with you, but because there was a little hump in the ground at the spot he’d been standing at.

And you remembered.

You remembered even if the first time it happened was more than a decade and a half ago, you remembered even if you had grown out of visiting that field when you went to college.

“She remembered.”

“Yeah, Jungkook. Obviously she remembered. Because she loves you back, and it’s honestly making me more upset that the two of you haven’t worked it out yet.”

“Fuck, Nayoung. Fuck. Thank you. Thank you — I have to think about — fuck, I’m sorry it’s so fucking late and I’ve just called you and went on this weird self discovery path —“

Her laugh is bright when she cuts him off, and Jungkook feels part of his heart ease when he realizes that she’s not angry with him.

“Go to bed, talk to her tomorrow. I love you, Jungkook. And you love her and she loves you in a completely different way, but I love you. And don’t say sorry, I was up anyways.”

She hangs up after, not giving Jungkook space to even say goodbye, and simultaneously giving him a million different things to think about, but only one that he can really focus on: how he’s in love with you.

And how, apparently, you’re in love with him as well.

—

The beauty of New York City is the anonymity it provides, even amongst 8 million other people. Street bustle, skyscrapers kiss the clouds, floods of people drown you in the street, and even through all of that, you have the privilege of being alone. Solitude; a lighter flickering in a Brooklyn balcony, and the drip of water down in Harlem.

Tonight, you and Jungkook have the privilege of being alone, just 20 minutes away from each other, staring at the same film photograph of the both of you from the photobooth you’d stopped at a couple of weeks prior.

The grainy picture features four shots; your hair is damp, and Jungkook can still feel how it felt on his neck, your lips are a dark maroon, and Jungkook can still feel them hovering right above his. Jungkook’s in his leather jacket, and you feel the goosebumps on your arms from when the fabric brushed against your skin. His hair’s also wet from the rain, but the gel he still uses had kept it together surprisingly well; you remember the way you’d made fun of him for his incessant usage of the product.

The picture on the top right is a glamour shot, if anything. You’re smiling, and when he looks down at it, his chest blooms with a warmth akin to spring’s first bloom. He has a softer look; sporting the lopsided grin you’re so used to seeing, and it makes your stomach coil enough to make you physically look away and laugh.

Top left is a lot less serious, you remember he’d made a joke about the two of you being mafioso heirs, and it hadn’t even been that funny, but the picture features bright, childish, innocent grins. Your eyes are shut, smile spreading all the way across your face as you lean forward. His head is thrown back, lip piercing caught between his bottom lip when he laughs. The both of you hear each other’s laughter, echoing in the photobooth and across the empty, rain stricken streets of New York.

You think of how much you miss this, about how this day had inevitably been when you fell face first, defenseless with your guard all the way down. You think of the bottom left picture, not having the courage to look at it fully; you remember how you’d leaned into his body, and how he’d let you do it, how your lips had been just millimeters from touching when the flash had caught you off guard and you’d looked up straight into his eyes like something out of a Glen Powell rom-com.

Jungkook thinks of how much he misses this, about how this day had been one of the ‘moments he knew’, a collection that grows the more he thinks about how irrevocably in love with you he is. He thinks about the bottom right picture, how he’s looking at you and you’re fixing your hair, how he got the picture developed and still didn’t see the stars in his eyes, still didn’t realize that you were always the one.

The four photos are pressed to your heart. You haven’t had it in you to fall asleep, there’s still a full ache in your head from the alcohol and you make a note to thank AJ for getting you home safe today. A tinge of embarrassment shoots down your body when you think about the conversation you had with him today, the conclusion you’d reached, what you’d learned about Jungkook and Nayoung, what you’d learned about yourself; that you loved him, and he didn’t love you back, and how it made you want to die the more you thought of the month the two of you had.

The four photos are pressed to his heart. He wonders if they’ll soothe the ache or not knowing whether you love him, too. The phone he’s just put down should provide him with silence; fuck , he craves silence, but Nayoung’s words just echo in his head. Talk to her tomorrow, but he has no idea if you feel even remotely the same. He has no idea if he’s completely off base, he has no idea if he’s gotten the wrong ideas based off of the last month, and the guilt of potentially having taken your platonicity and genuine friendship as a lead eats him alive.

[But it can’t all be platonic, you think.]

[But it can’t all be platonic, he thinks. ]

No, you think. Because the alcohol might’ve made it easier, but you remember the way he tasted on your lips a little too well. The way his hands traveled down your shirt, sodden and soaked in the rain, caressing the curve of your waist. The way your own fingers had explored the figure of his shoulders, pressing into the hard plains of muscle as he moved his lips against yours too languidly to be a drunken detour.

No, he thinks. Because the drowsy haze of Sunday might’ve made it easier, but he remembers the way your leg was thrown over his thighs, the soft cotton of his own shirt hardly covering any of your legs, the rasp in your voice when you’d mumbled out his name, looking over you as he cooked. The way you’d laughed at his stupid dad jokes, and the way Mingyu had slapped his back after you’d gone, talking about the ‘way she looked at you’ — there’s no way it was just platonic.

There was nothing platonic about the way he’d held you in line at Liberty, the way he’d looked at you when you went up the fire escape when Mingyu had another girl over, the way you’d spoken, hushed into his skin the night you fell asleep at his place. Maybe falling in love, for the two of you, was like having your eyes closed while standing on the shore; maybe it was a wave that came crashing, rushing up your legs and soaking the two of you entirely before you even realized it. Maybe all the two of you had been doing, was enjoying the crashing of water ahead of you, ignorant to the receding waves and how dangerously close you were to being caught up in the mess your ignorance would inevitably bring.

And there you are —

Present day New York City, staring up at empty ceilings with full hearts, itching to reach for your phones with nothing but apprehension holding you back; what if he doesn’t love me, what if she doesn’t love me, what if I’m off-base, what if everything changes, 23 years down the drain, I have to tell her, I have to tell him. Alone, anonymous, lovers amidst millions others, feeling so much that you taste it on your tongues, feeling so much that you want to rip your beating hearts out; alone, anonymous, in love, in pain.

And there you are —

Begging the other not to go, because you’re so bad at being alone, but not being able to tell them why.

—

Cravath asks you to work in their London office after you graduate. It’s one of the perks of

consistently being at the top of your class, one of the perks of having an internship at the best law firm in all of New York, and it’s an opportunity you can’t say no to.

You figure it’ll help you get over this Jungkook fiasco, considering the fact that it’s basically a dead-end for you; you wonder if Watchell Lipton can refer AJ to a firm in London so you won’t completely be alone in a new city, you start to think about how wonderful it’d be to get some time away, to get space away from where you’d suffered such a big loss just a couple of years back — away from where you’d been pushed beyond every limit of yours since the first grade.

There’s nothing loss has taught you other than to put up walls, to close people off and to shut them out at any waking moment that you even come close to vulnerability. It’s not healthy, nor is it a quality you’re proud of; your stricken body’s last attempt at cushioning any further blows, any further losses from even those you claim to be the closest to you. It’s the reason you never told your parents about the intense stress their expectations put onto you, it’s why AJ doesn’t know about your ex but you know about all of his, and it’s the reason you’ve been ignoring Jungkook for a week now.

The realization that you were, in fact, madly in love with him had might as well carved through your skin to make its way into your system judging by the pain you’ve gone through since it’s hit you. You’re a rational adult, and loving someone is human nature, but loving your best friend and knowing that he doesn’t love you back should be something God implements in hell as punishment. You haven’t been able to look at the photo booth picture, have turned every photograph that reminds you of him around to avoid seeing it, have turned to sticking your head in your ridiculously heavy textbooks so you have a way to save face should Jungkook ever text you, and you’re sure that this game of shutting him out is going to be successful when you accept the job in London.

But you don’t.

For some reason, the drafted email accepting the position sits on your laptop, in a minimized tab that you open and contemplate hitting ‘send’ for hours on end, but never do. There’s a sliver of yearning — stupid, human yearning — that you wish you could just turn off, that tells you there’s a chance Jungkook might love you back. That tells you this situation will end with him running to you in the rain and kissing you under the stars, a grandiose recreation of the kiss you’d had almost a month ago now; the little voice in your head is your biggest vice, and you stare at the email over and over everyday, telling it to just shut up, telling you to get over yourself because he’s always loved Nayoung and you will never be her — never be that pretty, that put together, that kind or compassionate — and you tell yourself to just send the email.

Send it, burn this love you have with the littlest flicker of emotion you have left in your heart, move to London and start over. Reinvent yourself and learn to love properly, learn to love things that will love you back, learn to feel properly and not be so stringent on goals, learn to be human because it seems like you’d forgotten how to, until the realization that you love Jungkook barreled towards you like an avalanche of everything you never wanted to be.

Send it, and tell Jungkook. Take his little display of sadness and walk out of his life with the bitter taste of a confession that’ll never leave your lips still heavy on your tongue. Watch him in pictures like he’d watched you sleep, watch him fall in love with Nayoung eventually and move out because Computer Science has a killer starting salary, watch him pursue something he wants to do —

(“I think I really wanna do art. Sing, paint, do something that doesn’t involve binary code.”

“I think you should go for it. Stick it out till graduation and work for like a month because your starting salary is totally gonna support you even if you fail, and take the leap. Kierkegaard.”

“No idea what the fuck a ‘kira gard’ is.”

“Shut up.”

“You think I’ll be able to do it?”

“I think you’re the most talented person I know. If anyone can be an artist, it’s you.”)

If you love someone, let them go. And you want to do it so badly, a part of you craves the final sweet release of pain that New York City will give you before you escape it, but there’s another part that’s screaming in agony because you cannot do this to yourself, like your body fears that giving up someone you love so much that it physically hurts you to think about will be the final straw, that you’ll drop dead at JFK airport if Jungkook doesn’t tell you that he loves you, too.

If you love someone, let them go. Let them go, let them go. If you love yourself, let yourself go. Leave, and enjoy London and free yourself from a city that’s so beautiful that all you’ve done is loved it and the loneliness it’s handed you on a platter. If you love New York, let it go. If you let Jungkook, let him go.

You’re staring at the email again, and you can’t tell if you’re tearing up because of how long you haven’t been blinking, or if it’s because you know that when you finally click the send button, it’ll all be over.

You’ll be putting the fear of shaken espressos behind you, you’ll be putting Jungkook, New York, your parents, your entire life behind you; you’ll graduate in two weeks after finals, and you’ll grab nothing but your passport to go to London. It’ll be over, which is a thought that’s as daunting as it is relieving, but not because of your ex, not because of New York, or your parents —

It’s hard solely because you don’t want to put Jeon Jungkook behind you. The first person you’d ever talked to about how burnt out you were, the first person to sleep under the same sheets with you, the only person to eat a meat lovers pizza at 2Bros, the only person you let your guard down with, the only person who’d ever seen you cry, the only person you’d ever been in love with. The photographs you’ve turned around, the permanent imprint of his lips on yours, the way his hand found purchase on the small of your back, his heartbreaks and your biggest loss, the strum of his guitar back in middle school when you’d blushed under his gaze for the first time, the way he rubs at his nape when he’s embarrassed, his smile, the way he trusts you with his life — you’d sooner die than call it quits on those memories, but it’s even harder to imagine living with them, knowing that he’s never going to feel the same way about it.

Your heart is heavier than it's ever been, even if you’ve been carrying the weight of your own world for the past 17 years at least, without putting it down even for a second. You’re sure you’re crying, if the way the words on your screen blur is any indication. Your left side aches the same way it had a month ago when he told you about Nayoung, and you wonder if that pain will ever go away if you leave.

Your fingers tremble when they clasp the mouse, and you decide that the pain is something you’ll have to live with. It’s the melancholy it’ll leave in your eyes that’ll make strangers fall in love for you and never quite forget; it’s the edge of having to walk away from something, from the only thing, you’ve ever loved, that’ll make you a strong lawyer. Unattached, a bit desolate, and incredibly strong, but only when working. It’ll be this mistake that’ll prevent you from making others, it’ll be this mistake that’ll make you fall harder for whoever will come next; that’ll teach you to cherish those who love you back.

(You fall back onto your bed and break down.)

(You send the email minutes after you’re done crying.)

(You figure you’ll tell Jungkook the day after. That you’ll apologize. For everything.)

(You figure Jungkook’s going to cut you off for not telling him before sending the email.)

(You figure it’s for the best.)

—

Jungkook feels like his heart is being torn from his chest, inch by inch so he feels the surface of his skin ripping, so he feels the blood dripping down his chest and soaking his shirt, so he can feel the poison in his veins, can feel the thump of the organ when it’s pulled out of his body.

You’re leaving.

“You’re leaving?”

You’re leaving.

He loves you, and you’re leaving in two weeks and he’s trying so hard to not look like he’s in unfathomable, unspeakable, unrelentless pain that leaves him wanting to get on the floor of his apartment and claw at his chest so he can scrape some of the ache away.

He clenches his fingers into fists and refuses to look at you.

“I’m sorry, Jungkook, I thought I’d tell you but finals had me busy —“

You’re fucking lying to him, too. You’re leaving, and he loves you and you’re lying. You weren’t busy with finals, you were ignoring him for whatever godforsaken reason, you were cooped up in your apartment overthinking and fixating on whatever he’d told when the two of you had brunch, and you were doing it on purpose.

Fucking finals.

Your go-to excuse for shutting people out and putting up walls that nobody will ever be allowed to break down. He thought he’d be the first to, he thought he’d already broken them, plowed through the cement when he’d kissed you in a back alley, when he’d held you in his arms after the wake, when he’d bought you your coffee and gotten the order correct, when he had you in his bed. He thought he’d broken them, but he’d been wrong; he hadn’t done shit to stop you from holding yourself away from the world, he hadn’t done shit to help you face vulnerability instead of ignoring it in favor of not facing anyone at all, he hadn’t done shit to get you out of your stupid fucking law school shell, and he was in love with you despite this one tiny flaw, and he knew everything about you, so he knew you were lying.

“Stop that.”

“Stop what?”

“You’re fucking lying to me.”

Your scoff is incredulous and it makes Jungkook want to pull his hair out and drag his blunt fingernails down his face until he’s bleeding out to show you; I care, stop pushing me away, why are you leaving, you don’t know I’m in love with you, why, why, why, why —

“I’m not lying, you know I have finals — you have my planner!”

“No. No, you’re not fucking doing this again. In sophomore year, you were upset because of something your dad said and locked yourself in your room for three days straight. You said you had finals back then. After your fucking boyfriend died, you locked yourself in your room and said you had finals. Whenever you’ve been scared, or humiliated, or had any semblance of fucking human emotions, you’ve said you have —“

“Jungkook, you have no fucking right to bring that up now, what the fuck is wrong with you.”

“What’s wrong with me is you! You decide you’re leaving the only place you’ve ever lived in within the week I last saw you and didn’t even think to discuss it with me? Even after the month we’ve had — even after the life we’ve had?”

You stare at him, and he can see the redness in your eyes like he had seen before you broke down at the wake.

He wants to get down on his knees and put his forehead to your feet and apologize, hold you and never let you go.

You’re leaving.

“It’s my life, not yours.”

“It’s my life, too. You know this.”

“No. I don’t fucking know this, because I’ve worked my ass off for the past 17 years to get to law school and graduate and work at the best fucking law firm in the country. It’s not your fucking life —“

“You’ve killed yourself for all this—”

You stand up from his couch, and turn away so he doesn’t see your tears fall.

“You’ve fucking killed yourself. You worked like a dog since middle school to get into that pretentious private school, and you worked even harder to get to Columbia. You never had a fucking dream, you never had a childhood because you killed yourself to get to this point. You never had time to have a fucking ‘life’ or whatever you call it because all you’ve ever done is work for some stupid fucking goal.”

You sob once, twice, and Jungkook has to put a hand to his heart so he doesn’t die on the spot.

“And you can’t tell me that I don’t know this because I’m the only one who knows this! I’m the only person you’ve ever told about this and it fucking hurts because I love you, and it fucking hurts because you’re leaving me —“

“Because my best friend is leaving me,” he backtracks.

Best friend. Because you don’t know, and he doesn’t know how he’s going to have the heart to tell you.

“And it hurts because my best friend is leaving me and she didn’t even think to mention this before.”

“You didn’t think to mention Nayoung even once in this aforementioned ‘month’ we had,” the quotes you make with your fingers do nothing but show him how much you’re shaking. He wants to grab your hands and tell you that it’s okay; that you don’t need to cry and that he has you.

That he’ll always have you.

(But he won’t, because you’re leaving.)

You’re leaving, and you’re talking about Nayoung for some reason.

“Yeah, because we had sex one fucking time! I don’t even like her, why the fuck would I bring her up — and why are you bringing her up like fucking a girl is anywhere similar to moving halfway across the world.”

You sob once, twice, and when you turn around to face him, he feels like he’s holding his dead heart in his cold hands and watching it try to come to life.

“I’m bringing it up because you love her, and you didn’t even bother to tell me.”

“I don’t fucking love her.”

I love you. I love you, why do you think I love her —

Why do you think he loves Nayoung, and why does your face fall when you say it, and why did you start to ignore him the day he told you that he’d had sex with her?

“You do. She’s the one that got away, and she’ll be here so it doesn’t fucking matter —“

“Stop saying that it doesn’t matter. Stop saying that you don’t matter.”

“Because I don’t, Jungkook,” a sob breaks your sentence and it feels like his world has just come crashing down when he realizes how you feel about yourself. “I’ve lived here for 23 years and nobody knows shit about me and you’re right, it’s because I shut myself away, but nobody bothers anyways and I’ve worked so hard to get here so I’m gonna take the chance to leave, so I don’t have to not matter anymore, so I can like… change.”

“You don’t have to change, ___”

Your name on his lips is a prayer, a silent hope to the god he only remembered when he was fucking somebody, a plea and the final chance he gets to have you.

“Don’t change, __”

Don’t let her leave me, God. Don’t let her change, don’t let her go.

“How can you ask that of me?”

He hears his mothers laugh from when he told her he wanted to be a ninja. He decides that he doesn’t want to be a ninja, or a computer science major, or an artist. He decides that he wants you to know how madly in love with you he is.

“Because I love you.”

“I love you too, Jungkook.”

“No — fuck, I’m in love with you.”

Your stare is dumbfounded, like he’s just told you that he’s a vampire hybrid or something else completely unorthodox. He would laugh at the look typically, but he feels empty, like the compression that had been a steady pressure on his chest for the past few days had lifted, only to be replaced with a pain unlike any other, because what if this messes it up more?

What if you would originally go to London and keep tabs with him and be in his life, and what if he’s told you this and turned you off the idea of ever even looking in his direction again.

What if you don’t love him back?

“You’re in love with me.”

He nods, silently swallowing as he tries to whisper a prayer to whatever god is listening that whatever you say won’t end in you leaving for good.

“You’re in love with me?”

“I am. I have been. I am. I’m in love with you, I’ve been in love with you, and I don’t even remember how long it’s been since it first happened.”

“Jungkook —“

You chuckle, and it should break his heart because it seems like you’re on the road to mocking him, but he feels his heart rejuvenate in his arms when he hears the sound of your laugh. It sounds like a metaphor he’s been trying to write down for ages. It sounds familiar, it sounds intimate, and his name rolling off your tongue is a balm he presses over the open wound of his chest to soothe it.

“Jungkook — you’re in love with me, and not Nayoung?”

He can’t speak, isn’t used to the lightness in his chest.

He shakes his head, and he swears he sees the world light up behind your eyes. He swears you’re the prettiest girl in the entire world, even when tears track down your face and even when you’re red-eyed and have a snotty nose from crying.

(Especially then.)

“Fuck.”

“Fuck, Jungkook, I’m in love with you too. I am. I have been. I’m in love with you, and I’ve been in love with you for as long as —“

You won’t finish that sentence, he decides, taking one long stride towards you to close the distance between your bodies. Your face in his hands is warm, a little sticky from the tears, and your lips are chapped. He doesn’t doubt that he’s in any better of a condition, but you look up at him through your wet eyelashes and he’s had enough.

He’s had enough of yearning, and pleading, and wondering if you love him back because you do. He’s had enough of waiting and wondering why he keeps thinking of you because he wants to think of you.

In fact, he thinks he’s open to thinking of you forever.

So he kisses you, and he thanks his lucky stars when you kiss back, for blessing him with the embodiment of them in the form of you, a girl who shone so brightly that he couldn’t see the love cooped up in her eyes until she cried, told him she was moving to London, and kissed him in his living room.

He thinks he could die happy, but he doesn’t want to die when he finally has you.

Finally has you.

(Except, you could be leaving.)

Jungkook ignores this because you tilt your head so his lips slot against yours better, and he can barely focus on anything other than the way you feel and the fact that he’s kissing his best friend — kissing the love of his life.

He bared his heart and walked through hell for this, and if the way he feels right now is redemption, he’d do it all over again.

—

It starts with you on a table, umbilical cord freshly cut, wrapped up in a pretty pink fluffy blanket. Jungkook, just a one year old, stares blankly, and starts crying in his mothers arms.

It starts in the suburbs of New York City, where you lose yourself between textbook pages and Jungkook wonders what he’ll ever amount to being.

It starts with your boyfriend dying, and the way shaken espressos feel on your tongue. It starts with Jungkook seeing you cry for the first time, and it starts with you wondering if you can ever love someone.

It starts with law school, and a three week gap in your final year during which you and Jungkook don’t talk. He finds himself thinking of you, and you text him, asking to meet up for dinner.

It starts with him asking you about a friend of yours, and you getting vigorously upset, uncalled for and downright appalling on Jungkook’s part.

It starts with you calling him to apologize while he makes a drunken mistake. It starts with you meeting him to apologize and promising to do better; it starts with him telling you that he doesn’t need you to ‘do better’ like it’s a standardized test — that he just needs you to talk to him.

It starts with an amazing month, trailblazing and falling for each other, starts with drunken kisses and getting soaked in the rain and the ruse of being ‘best friends’ and drinking margaritas even though Jungkook doesn’t really like cocktails. It starts with the city of New York, and the anonymous back alleys where millions walk, but nobody lingers long enough to leave a mark.

It starts with him telling you about this drunken mistake, starts with the both of you realizing how madly in love you are with the other. It starts with you accepting a job in London, and it starts with Jungkook calling his ex and figuring out that it’s always been you.

It starts with an argument encased in the walls of his living room, where you empty your heart out and he empties his, starts with accusations that he loves somebody else and utter silence because he can’t tell you that he loves you.

There’s a million beginnings to this story, thousands of waking moments that could’ve been the moment both of you knew, hundreds of little sparks that ignited into the brilliant flame of the love between the two of you, but there’s only one ending.

This is the end of yearning; his lips are on yours, and his warm hands are holding your body like if he lets go, you’ll really be gone. His hands find purchase on every inch of you like he’s trying to map your very existence out with his ten fingers, and you lose yourself when he licks into your mouth, your own hands flying to his face, tracing the little scar beneath his eye, scratching over his sideburns, on an excavation of your own; to discover him and to never let go.

He has you pushed up against the kitchen counter, large hands groping you through your jeans, soft squeezes at the flesh, quiet moans coloring the air when you move your tongue in tandem with his.

Jungkook promises himself to take it slow, but he doesn’t know if he’ll be able to honor that thought when your manicured nails play with the hair at his nape, when he feels you pull away so you can get a better look at him —

Fuck, are you a sight to see. Red rimmed eyes, swollen lips, cheeks dusted with the slightest hues of pink; you wear a smile so pretty he thinks he could fall for you all over again, and your warm breath hits his face with every exhale.

You think he’s never looked better, either. His lips are bitten from kissing you, tear tracks down his soft skin, jaw tight and eyes dark when he looks at you as though he’s trying to drink you in like you’re a glass of fine scotch. You rub your thighs together, desperate for some friction to provide even a fraction of relief from this innate need Jungkook’s instilled in you with just one kiss, and he catches your lips in another, clearly wanting this to go the same way you do.

Jungkook encases your face in his hands, he feels you keen against his lips and releases yours to curse lowly. Your hands travel down his chest, toned and warm from hours at the gym, and trace down the trail of hair you know leads down into his underwear. It has him bucking his hips against you lightly and you can barely hold back a moan, readjusting your focus so you can trace the denim of his waistband, letting two of your fingers slip beneath the fabric, rubbing at the elastic of his boxers —

You’re a fucking tease, and Jungkook should’ve known this about you after 23 years but he’d be lying if he said that it wasn’t thoroughly enjoyable. It’s barely been 5 minutes of you fervently making out with him, though, that he realizes how badly he wants you. The bulge in his pants is one indication, but he’s utterly surrounded by you — your cologne, your soft sounds, breathless whimpers, incredulous gaze like you can’t really fathom this; he gets it, he’s horrified that he’ll wake up in his bed and you won’t love him back and you won’t be kissing him and feeling him up like this, and he needs to feel you, needs the reaffirmation, needs you to fall apart between his sheets. He needs everything you have to offer, needs to smell your shampoo on his pillowcases and your perfume on his shirts and he might as well should just die if he’s waited this long to stall some more.

Two hands trail down your back, pads of his fingers pressing into the little dimples at the bottom of your spine before they land on the junction of your thighs. His eyes are stuck on yours, like he’s too afraid to even look away, and you smile against his jaw.

“Jump, baby,” it’s a whispered order, too silent for anybody but you to have heard it, and the thought makes your brain go numb for a second — it’s you and him now, your whispered secrets and hushed tales, it’s the two of you and this space you’ve curated, even if it was out of your own heartbreak. You can’t do anything but oblige; fuck, you might as well should just die if you don’t hang on to every word that leaves the tip of his tongue.

Your legs find home around his waist, and he carries you to his room, telling his high school self and college self and every single past existence of his that you’re his. He’s mapping out this floor with you in his arms, and though they’ve been around many women, he doesn’t think any one of them have fit like you do. It’s simple intimacy, you can see sunlight pouring into the living room as he carries you out, you see the art he has framed, and you see traces of his roommate strewn around the apartment. You wonder what his and your apartment will look like, wonder if he’ll like the interior design you do, and decide that if he doesn’t, you’ll let him choose whatever.

The door to his room shuts behind you, and you notice the only photo frame he has contains a picture of the two of you.

Your eyes tear away from the glass frame in fear of breaking down again, and you choose to look at him. You choose to look at his eyes that hold all the stars in your skies, you choose to run your finger over the curve of his face and the slant of his nose and his Cupid’s bow. You choose to bask in his presence, feel all of his body pressed against you and feel him uncomfortably hard against your thighs — it’s a bit filthy, but you’ll take anything when it comes to Jungkook, and you let that thought linger when you lean forward to kiss him again.

Jungkook closes his eyes because he doesn’t think he can look into yours without going insane. He hasn’t shut his curtains, so the sunlight lands on your face and highlights all the angles and all the slopes and he thinks that he should memorize the planes of your face, that it’ll give him a reason to stay alive. Your lips smack softly, and he readjusts his hips so he can grind the clothed bulge in his jeans against your own, and his thighs stutter just a smidge when you let out the sweetest moan he’s ever heard in his life.

His fingers trail their way down from your waist, pulling gently at the hem of your shirt, a silent final exit just in case you want to back out, but you don’t let him even consider the thought of you leaving when you pull your own shirt off your head. It’s an aggressive jerk, one that catches him off guard and following you, abandoning the piece of clothing somewhere in the corners of his room.

Even when you’re just in your bra, he can’t stop looking at your eyes. He can’t stop thinking of you, how you’re in his bed and how he has you with him now and how he’ll have you with him forever if he has anything to do with it. Jungkook never doubted that you were attractive, not even for a slight second, but he doesn’t dare look at you, near naked and in all your glory in front of him — he wonders if this is what Icarus felt like, wanting to fly so close to the sun because he loved Helios too much, and he vows that he’ll be careful, he won’t look too quickly and that he’ll be gentle because he cannot stand even the idea of losing you, even if he’d be the one crashing and burning.

You pull him closer by the name, and his hands go to cradle your bare shoulders. Before he can even process the proximity, your lips are on his neck, and they’re soft, warm: they’re everything he’s ever wanted and he feels like he’s been set aflame because he’s lived his whole life not really knowing what he wanted, but he knows now. Your lips on his skin are the tantalizing fruit that's been dangling behind his head the whole time and he can see it, can feel it and he can feel it; all he’s ever wanted is you, and he lets himself go, voice breathy and untethered to his own self as he moans, incoherent pleas for you to keep going.

Jungkook prays he’ll see marks tomorrow, if this is even real. He prays that you leave a tangible sign, a purple bruise on his golden skin as a reminder that this was once real. If you leave after he’s made love to you, he doesn’t think he’ll be able to recover from it, but if you leave your mark; the indent of your teeth and the faded stain of your lipstick, he thinks it’ll be enough to satiate him.

You’re not one to waste time, apparently, fingers tracing down his abs agonizingly fast before Jungkook can process the touch, reaching for the button on his jeans so he can be free, get inside you, because it’s been way too fucking long and you need him sheathed within your body like you’re entwined, like you’re one entity. You reckon the thought is one of the filthiest ones you’ve ever had, but it doesn’t matter, because you can feel yourself soaking through your panties and you run cold like ice, wanting him to melt you — needing him to melt you.

This will be your new beginning; fuck London, you decide. Fuck London if it means you have him like this, the pads of his fingers running like feathers over your skin, leaving chills in their wake. This will be your new beginning, his lips grazing over your collarbones as he grinds his hips into yours just hard enough for you to feel through your jeans. This will be your new beginning, desperately bucking your hips up to meet him halfway, to gain some much needed friction until he decides to stop giving you the tantalizing guise of what you need, until he decides to unbutton your jeans with daft digits,, pulling them until you lay before him in all your glory.

Jungkook has never known religion until he sees you like this. The curves of your body and the slope of your waist and the way your bra just barely covers your breasts and the way your panties sit on your hips and your collarbones illuminated by the sun that desperately laps at your soft skin like it, too, wants to have you wholly. He has never known a God until he thanks Him for you, thanks his lucky stars that he has you in front of him, fights the urge to sink to his knees and pray that you don’t disappear into a brilliant beam of light like you were nothing but a figment of his imagination.

His cock strains, and he reaches out to stroke the lace of your panties so gently, almost like he’s afraid to leave a mark, though he yearns for yours on his skin. You want to ink the calluses of his fingers so they leave permanent imprints on your body, so you feel the rough drag forever, but it's only an afterthought when he begins to rub at your clit through the fabric. The added friction feels like heaven on your tongue, like you can taste the waning of yearning on the tip of your tongue –

“Fuck, Jungkook,” your voice sounds dazed in your own ears, and he shifts your panties aside to rub your wetness all over your sex, thumb rubbing slow circles over your clit as his fingers tease your entrance. If there was a way to put the bliss, the desperation into words, you’re sure that you could talk for hours. You hear his breathing, heavy like he’s incredulous, in utter disbelief, and you hear the unrecognizable keens of his name.

“I know, baby. I know, I love you. Lemme have you.”

He repeats it like a prayer, those three words running like water off his tongue as he rubs tight eight-figures of your clit. Eyes raking your figure, he drinks in the tilt of your head backwards, a tattoo on your shoulder blade that he makes a note to ask you about, the bend of your elbows and the way your stomach tightens. Jungkook tries to take his time, but his fingers are drenched in your arousal and he deems you wet enough to slip his index finger in.

You moan, high and unadulterated, and he moans, low and throaty; it feels like you’re complete, and he can’t help but wonder how your walls would feel on his cock. You suck him in, pussy greedy for something to fill it, and he does his best to affirm this when he bends down to catch your lips within his again –

“Shit, doll, you’re soaking me… look at your sweet cunt, look at how she’s taking me,” he uses his free hand to tilt your chin downwards, and the pink of your bitten lips distracts him for just a second before he pushes another finger in.

“Jungkook – ah, fuck, more please, more,” you let your mind go adrift, thinking about how good you feel and then thinking of nothing at all when he curls his fingers in an upwards motion, rendering you speechless and fucked silly. The thought of what his cock would do is lost among a myriad of unsullied pleasure, and you don’t know whether it's because you haven’t cum in so long, but you’re dangerously teetering over the edge of your release, continuing to beg him to just throw you over.

He tells you he has you, eases another finger in until the tears that prickle the corners of your eyes finally spill over. He licks them away, rutting his hips up into his free hand like it gets him off, seeing you cry for him, seeing you writhe under him. He knows it's too much, knows that you’re close like he’s done this a million times before, like your body is his own.

“I’m f– fuck, so fucking close,” you can feel the coil in your lower belly so close to snapping that it makes you want to run away from the feeling. It’s all too much, because his thumb feels rough on your clit and his fingers are jackhammering into you like he has a point to prove, because he’s calling you his and his voice is echoing somewhere in the back of your mind, because all you can do is squirm and push your hips up to get yourself over the precipice of pleasure –

“Fu- fu- uck, Jesus –”

“I gotchu honey, let go for me, just let go, ‘m always hare, let go for me –”

What you expect to be a wave, crashing into you like the realization that you loved him had, is nothing but a soft roll of ecstasy taking ahold of every inch of your skin. It starts in your head, numbing your senses and then heightening them, makes its way down to your arms until you’re clawing at Jungkook’s because it’s so fucking good, rolls down your legs until you clench your toes, grapples at your throat until your voice is choked out and all you can do is pant helplessly. What you expect to be a wave is a slow pulse that leaves you breathless and staring up at Jungkook who seems to be mesmerized by the expression you’re wearing, fingers slowing within you as he helps you ride it out.

“Fucking hell, baby. You’re stunning,”

You laugh, out of it and incredulous as he presses a kiss – too chaste for the mind-blowing orgasm he’s just given you – to your temple.

“Gonna make me do that everyday, Jeon?”

“You can count on it, angel. I’ll make you do that every single day.”

The two of you move in tandem, knowing that this wasn’t nearly enough to satiate you both; your hands fly to his jeans, pulling his zipper down and yanking the fabric off of his legs. Jungkook’s laugh is breathy, pupils still blown out as he watches you try to get him naked and he lets you.

He lets you strip him until his skin is bare, watches you rake your eyes over his figure and pause at the ink of his arms. He vows to tell you about all the secret tattoos he’s gotten that remind him of you; that he got because of you, but all he can focus on is the way your eyes go dazed and glossy when you push down his boxers to pull his cock out.

You’re well aware that Jungkook is beautiful, and he’s never doubted his physical appearance for more than a split second since college, but he never thought that his dick would be the center of said attention. Fuck, he has a pretty cock; it’s thick and your mouth waters at the angry vein running down the underside of it, desperate to get your mouth on him and savor the weight of him on your tongue. It curves up, pretty mushroom tip having been rendered a dark red from when he was getting you off, the pearly beads of pre-cum that spill over the sides of it when you rub your hand over his length a stark contrast.

He buckles over, hand splaying over your stomach as he lets out a choked groan at the contact, and you can feel the wetness of the sheet underneath you as you see him lose himself underneath your touch. You could do this forever, and the inexplicable urge to just get him in your mouth takes over your body reflexively, but Jungkook doesn’t let you act on it; his warm fingers press down on your skin, and he lets his free hand replace yours on his cock.

“Gonna fuck you real good, darling. You’re gonna feel it all the way — shit — all the way up to here,” he pumps his cock like he’s trying to deprave himself of your pussy on purpose and your eyes desperate search for his, no longer trusting your brain to form adequate words to explain just how badly you need him to fuck you.

He knows, he knows you like the back of his hand, and he knows how much you need and crave this. Just as quick as he’d gotten your hands off of him, he presses himself to your entrance, rubbing the head of his cock up and down your embarrassingly wet slit. The squelching would typically have you curl in on yourself, but it’s Jungkook, and you’ve let every wall down around him and it feels so fucking incredible when he rubs his dick against your sensitive clit that you just cannot bring yourself to care;

“Please, please Jungkook —“

“I know, I know baby, shhh… just relax for me and I’ll make this so good, ‘kay? That’s my girl,” the hand on your stomach goes lax when you exhale, letting him align himself with your entrance and ease himself in.

He gets his tip in with surprising deftness, rubbing over your torso when you tense your body. He knows you’re not a virgin, he’s done this before and so have you, but with each other? It feels holy, like you’re coming back to earth and coming back to the person each of you is meant to be with.

His inked hand goes to cradle your face, pushing your hair away from your tear-stricken skin, kissing away at the new tears that threaten to slip from your eyes. You breathe out at his touch, and he pulls out all the way to thrust back into you, slipping in and filling you all the way to the brim.

A choked moan leaves you, and your simultaneous gasps color the air, mingling and dissipating as the two of you mold into one entity. Jungkook forgets the Bible verses about adultery, things of new beginnings and redemption and how you’re the Holy Grail he tried so hard to find when you were right there. He curses himself for not doing this earlier, for realizing so late, but it’s all so worth it when you give an experimental roll of your hips, bucking upwards to get him to move.

Jungkook thinks he would give you anything, take chunks out of the moon if you so looked at it with desire, and he thinks that he’ll lay his body down for you if you even implied that you wanted him to. He thrusts into you, a gritty moan leaving his throat when he feels your walls, warm and wet and fluttering around his cock. Your pussy is greedy for him, milking his every drop and he knows you can feel him, knows you feel everything.

He’s right, too, because the veins of his cock, every ridge and every edge of it is fully sheathed within you. When his shallow thrusts get longer, deeper, when he bucks his hips upwards to fuck you just right, when you look down at his hand and see the bulge of his cock in your stomach — fuck, it’s exhilarating, and he seems to notice it too, following your gaze and letting his hips lose their well adjusted rhythm for just a split second.

“G-god Jungkook, so fucking full — shit.”

“Yeah, you are. Fuck, fuck, I told you. Told you I’d fill your greedy little cunt up.”

You think this is the only side of Jungkook you haven’t seen, so when he continues to talk, confidence and this natural allure of dominance absolutely dripping off of him, you thank whatever deity is up there for letting you have him.

“Look at you, tsk tsk. Baby, you kept this pretty pussy away from me for so fucking — shit — long?”

His moans are nothing compared to the high keens, pornographic breathy whimpers that leave your throat. It’s like he’s ripped off every barricade you put up in front of you, has you naked and bare and begging in his sheets like you were made for this, fucks you like your pussy was made for this.

“How’d you keep her satisfied without me, darling?”

He leans down, hands still playing with your hair and holding onto your face in a way that you know will leave pink fingerprints — in a way that makes you wonder if he even believes this is real, grasping onto you so he can reassure himself that you’re tangible. You see the knot in his brows, feel the murmur of his words against your jaw when he presses his lips to the bone, catch the tension in his abdomen as he tries to keep his rhythm.

You’re sure he won’t have to, though, because there’s something about the way he’s leaning down into you, the way he’s thrusting into you so deep, never slow but never too fast, the way he snakes one hand between your bodies to rub at your clit, knowing he won’t be able to last long inside of you. All of it has your head spinning, and you’re not sure if you’ll ever experience anything this riveting, this revitalizing before. It feels like you’re closer to being born again with every thrust, with every bit of the coil in your stomach tightening —

He presses his forehead to yours, thumb rubbing circles onto your clit, cock prodding against just the right spot like he’s practiced this only for you, only for you. Your eyes meet, and you see tears in the corner of his own eyes, you feel his hand trembling in your hair as he tries to leave traces of his prints on every inch of you — you lock your legs around his waist, and the new angle is like the straw on the camel’s back as you’re thrown so violently over the edge that it catches you off guard.

This one is a wave, drenching you and drenching his cock and the sheets and the miles of skin that connect the two of you. He lets out a deep groan, lips connecting to the column of your throat when you throw your head back, nails digging deep into the skin of his shoulders so as to lessen the blow.

Fuck, he wants you to leave his back scratched and bloody, needs a reminder of this rebirth; needs the sting of you permanently imprinted if it on his body, then in his brain.

You get the memo, clearly, running the sharp acrylics up and down the toned expanse of his back as you just barely catch your breath — it comes in pants, the achy pleasure of overstimulation creeping its way up your spine.

If he doesn’t come inside of you, it’ll be his biggest regret. You’re smart, he knows you’re on the pill and he knows you would’ve told him to pull out, wouldn’t have had your legs wrapped around his waist if you didn’t want this just as bad as he did, but he opens his mouth to ask anyways.

“Come inside, baby. I — fuck. I fucking love you, I’ll love you forever, come inside of me, please.”

The deliriosity of your orgasm, along with the continuous sensation of being fucked senseless as Jungkook loses his rhythm and resorts to jackhammering into you, chasing his high like you’re nothing but a toy to do it; all of it pushes you into overdrive and you babble, begging for him to finish inside like it’s the only thing you can think of.

He doesn’t dare look away from your face, mapping every second within his brain, feeling the familiar feeling of an orgasm washing its way up to shore. He’s sure you’re on the same page, too, recognizing the face he’s seen twice now etch itself back onto your features —

You cum for a third time when his hips stutter and he buckles over your body, hand never moving from your head, cradling it like the contact is keeping him grounded. You feel the warm ropes of his cum paint your insides, and the third orgasm is nowhere near as intense as the others, just a gentle pulsation of pleasure and a bout of love that you don’t think you’ve ever felt before blooming over your heart.

Jungkook collapses next to you, dirty sheets be damned when he throws his inked arms over your body. For a while, neither of you find it in yourselves to talk — it’s barely even the orgasms, more so the fact that the two of you are best friends who are madly in love with each other, the fact that you’ve just told each other this and then proceeded to have the most mindblowing sex the either of you could even imagine, all within the span of an hour or so.

He’s first to make a move, lifting your chin so you look at him, smiling down at you so gently that you feel every bit of insecurity — every worry that’s already clouding your mind about the future, London, all of it — disappear.

You match his gaze, trying to read what is so clearly written in his eyes. I love you, they say, twinkling brighter than the golden rays of sunshine that pour through his poorly strewn curtains. It’s hard to speak so you don’t, opting to reach up and slot your mouth against his.

Jungkook swears he’s been given a second chance at life when you kiss him, and he decides to plan it out better this time. The thought goes away quicker than he’d like, though, because you slip your tongue into his mouth and his brain short circuits for the umpteenth time that day. It’s hard to imagine anything being difficult if you kiss him like this, it’s hard to imagine struggle, hard to imagine dissatisfaction, hard to imagine not being in love with every waking moment of his life when he’s this madly in love with you.

You pull away.

“I’m not worried, by the way.”

He grins, leaning into your smaller frame to press a kiss against the junction of your shoulder.

“I know. I’m not either.”

“We‘re gonna make it work?”

“Yeah. Of course. It’s us, ___. We’ll make it work.”

—

Jungkook doesn’t like summer, but he thinks you make it better. You graduate law school a week after he graduates college, and he’s in the front row watching you give your high honors speech before getting your degree. You tell Cravath that you can’t work in London, and ask AJ if he’s willing to quit Wachtell Lipton and take your place.

He tells you that he thinks he’s in love with you, that he’s happy you’ve found love with Jungkook, and takes the job.

You decide to give New York a second chance that summer; decide to give yourself a new beginning as you start to work and don’t immediately take immense bouts of stress upon yourself. Jungkook thinks about what he really wants to do, and though he takes a job that is gratuitously well paying – bless the Comp Sci starting salary – he thinks he wants to freelance art on the side.

–

When fall rolls around, you stand in the kitchen with your mother. The two of you look out at Jungkook and your father turning pages of old photo albums, and she tells you that she’s proud of you. You wonder if this is what it feels like to be avenged. It gets colder, and Jungkook gets you all the white mochas you want to drink, especially when you drive up to the cemetery to see your ex in early October. The two of you lay down orange roses, and you tell him that you’ll always love him in a way nobody else knows – Jungkook is proud, you’re proud, and for the first time in years, your heart doesn’t feel heavy when he drives around that part of town.

Jungkook paints portraits of you in the living room of the apartment you share. The two of your extremely well-paying jobs had let you buy a penthouse in Greenwich Village, and you’re just grateful you can find someplace to call home. Speaking of living together, Mingyu had enrolled himself into a sobriety program when Jungkook had forced him to watch that TED Talk, only this time neither of them had been high.

You tell Jungkook’s parents, too, and their excitement is nowhere near as gentle as your parents’ had been. His mom cries, and his dad tells you that he’s been rooting for you and Jungkook for ages.

(As it turns out, Jungkook had been rooting for him and yourself for ages as well.)

–

Winter follows, encasing New York in an icy chill but your heart has never been warmer. You have a classic NYC Christmas, doing all the insanely cliche tourist activities that are manageable. Nayoung moves out of state as well, and Jungkook cries into her shoulder at the airport. You’re there with him every second of every day – baking cookies, forcing him to take notes when the two of you watch Die Hard together for the first time, in his sweaters, in his sheets, in his heart.

Jungkook’s art sells well, he loves this city, and he still loves getting 2Bros with you – he even forces you to get the meat pizza he’s devoured for years, and you decide that while it’s not so bad, that you’ll continue to make fun of him for it. A tradition, just like the coke floats you still buy in sub-zero temperatures.

He makes you a shaken espresso in February, and you tell him it tastes incredible.

You stop putting walls up, and he learns to actually talk about his feelings, and you’re still the same toddlers from two decades ago; a bit immature, bound to end up together, and totally susceptible to throwing your ice cream cones on the ground if the other shoes any semblance of an injury.

–

New beginnings are for spring, though. Months after his birthday and yours have passed, months after new years, right when the first flowers bloom and the cold starts to whisper it's goodbyes, right when he realizes it’s nearly been a year since the day he’d randomly thought of you and set lose this insane chain of events – right in the middle of April, he decides he’s going to marry you.

It won’t be anytime soon, but seeing as how you’re steadily progressing in your career, and he’s earning more with his art than with his job? The budget for a wedding is definitely on the table, and he vows to officially make you his one day.

Some day.

(He already has the ring in his cart on the Cartier website.)

(Mingyu comes out of the program a few weeks later, and Jungkook asks him to be the best man.)

(You’re on the same page, if the wedding themed Pinterest board he sees you shut with insane speed is any indication.)

–

You love infinitely, filled to the brim and overflowing with it; so much so that it gets overwhelming at times, but neither of you go. You choose him, and he chooses you, and seasons go by and Jungkook figures out the direction he wants to go in this new life, and you learn to be gentle with yourself, and neither of you go.

And so it goes.

You and Jungkook, two kids grow into two adults in the most marvelous city in the world. A million possible beginnings in the span of two decades, but one conclusion; one ending: the both of you aren’t flawless – it’s hard to be – you’re just bad at being alone.

—

a/n: U GUYS ITS HEREEEEE. I’m sorry for the incessant word vomit and unnecessarily long smut scene it was important for the plot development hehe. and if u feel bad for AJ and Nayoung… so do I! this is also a birthday fic for my love jungkook and I hope he has the bestest day in the entire universe I love U my little virgo sweet boy I should Kiss u a million times

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